


To Strive (I)

by Waldo



Series: The Coping Universe [1]
Category: West Wing
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Episode: s02e01 In the Shadow of Two Gunmen Part 1, Episode: s02e02 In the Shadow of Two Gunmen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scene, POV First Person, Part 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-06-27
Updated: 2004-06-26
Packaged: 2017-10-06 20:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waldo/pseuds/Waldo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has to keep going after the shooting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Most of the medicine was actually researched, but I did take creative license with a few things. All the background stuff I created. The stories in this universe all have that background in common (So does my story "Sudafed and Snowflakes"), so it helps to read them in order, but each of the four pieces are complete stories.

I don't remember getting here. Well, I do, but I don't. Things keep flashing through my mind like one of those three frame flashback things they do on t.v. You know, the ones where it's long enough not to be subliminal (which is   
illegal), but not long enough for you to really look at, process, understand.

I'm sitting in a waiting room surrounded by senior staff and a shitload of Secret Service. The chairs are wood and burlap and despite the padding, hard. And it reminds me of how hard the ground was where C.J. and I landed. She's okay, thank God. She didn't have a chance to get her hands up before hitting the concrete, and consequently banged her head. But she's okay. I remember hearing her asking if the President was dead. She was a little confused once the gunfire had died down, but then again, weren't we all?

It happened so fast.

So damn fast.

It was just luck. I heard the shots, I looked up… and I saw… him. Them. Something. A flash. I've been trying to sort it all out because I know Secret Service will eventually be taking our statements, but I don't know what to say other than it was instinct. I don't know a damn thing about guns other than way too many people own them, but when I looked up, it was like someone shone a beacon. I saw the light hit off the muzzle and I just moved. C.J. was two steps away. I took one, looked up, realized I didn't have time for the other and just leapt.

No one knows there's a hole in the back of my coat. And I'm going to keep it that way if I can. I felt the drag of the bullet through the fabric, the rush of air and heat, but I was too focused on getting C.J. all the way to the ground. I saw what was coming, she didn't. I had to do something or she'd be dead.

The way we went down was awkward. I tried to brace myself with a hand on either side of her head so my weight wouldn't land on her. In the process my watch caught on her necklace. Once we were down, I tried to roll away and the chain snagged. Then glass shattered over my head. I didn't have time to try and untangle my arm; I just pulled and covered my face to keep it from getting too scratched up and to keep the glass out of my eyes. And when I could look up again, the whole world had descended into chaos.

There were already paramedics there. One of them grabbed me and said something, but I couldn't hear over the commotion. He started running his hands over me, through my hair looking for any injuries, but as far as I could   
tell I was fine. I shook him off and aimed him at C.J. In my head I could still hear the thump of her head on the ground, even as the sirens went off and secret service agents were shooting back and everyone started screaming and shoving.

I grabbed the first Secret Service Agent I could find and got an update. The President and Leo were headed back to the White House, so apparently was Zoey. No one knew anything else about anyone else, so I appointed myself head-counter. I made a mental list of everyone who had made the trip. The President, Leo, Josh, Toby, C.J., Me and Charlie. Oh, and Zoey. I saw the mental checklist in my head and checked off the President, Leo and Zoey, since Secret Service said they were already in cars. I saw C.J. first, checked her off and went to see if she was hurt. She was clearly scared. Which, I suppose is healthy. Not being scared after something like this would be a clear indication of some sort of mental instability, I suppose. She kept staring at the shot out windows of the police car and I found myself trying to pull on the back of my suit jacket surreptitiously to cover up the small piece that was missing in the bottom hem.

Once I knew she was okay, I started back into the crowd. Toby, Charlie, Josh… once I knew where those three were, I could calm down. I was still scanning the crowd when I heard Toby yelling from behind me. At first I thought he was hurt. His voice was weak and unsteady. But then I saw him catch Josh as he fell over and my stomach dropped.

Part of me knew the best thing to do was to grab a paramedic, a police man, Secret Service, someone and make sure they were coming to help, but after the briefest hesitation, I just ran for him myself. I don't remember the paramedics showing up to assess and treat him. I just remember that I was holding his hand and trying to talk to him, keep him awake and then an elbow in my ribs pushed me out of the way. And then it was happening again. I don't remember moving back to Josh's side. But after I got shoved back a second time, C.J. grabbed my elbow and pulled me away, keeping a hand on my arm to stop me from trying to move back again. In the mean time I checked off Toby and Josh, we knew   
where they were and Josh was getting help.

I turned and looked at Toby, "Have you seen Charlie?"

Toby put a hand on my shoulder, "Yeah, he's fine. I saw Secret Service try and get a paramedic to check him out a second ago. But when I saw him he was up and talking to people, so he must be okay, right?"

I just nodded and looked back at Josh. Everyone was accounted for. Now I could have my own private little freak out about this all. I watched as they laid him on the ground, started taking vitals and tried to find an exit wound. I   
couldn't for the life of me remember if no exit wound was good or bad. It meant the bullet was still in there, which of course was bad. But that meant it hadn't destroyed any tissue on the other side of his body. That was good right? I had no idea.

I remember the blood. I remember that no matter how much gauze they packed onto him, it didn't stop. They'd take off the blood soaked layers that weren't directly against his skin and throw them on the ambulance floor before replacing them with white cotton, soon to be stained red. They said one of us could ride with him. I didn't ask, didn't defer. The only person I felt might have had a better claim to going with him would be Leo, since he'd known Josh longer and was his boss. But Leo had been shoved in a car and I was still there, so I climbed in after they loaded the stretcher. I sat where they pointed and was relieved to notice that I could hold his hand.

I wrapped the fingers of my right hand around his fingers. His forearms were strapped down, but I was able to bend his arm at the elbow and hold his hand close to my heart. They kept trying to immobilize his head, but he'd panic whenever they brought the strap across his forehead, so they eventually quit trying after getting a vague promise to lie still voluntarily. I brushed my other hand over his hair as they loaded up their gear and started away from this unholy disaster area. Every once in a while, I'd get my hands pushed out of the way as they put an oxygen mask over him or some sort of monitor was run over his shoulder and down onto his chest. So I moved my left hand down to rest on his   
wrist. On his pulse. His eyes were still open and every once in a while he'd say something, not usually something that made sense, but I still wanted that reassurance that his heart was, in fact, still beating.

He whimpered when they moved him or stuck another tube in him or shoved more bandages in the gaping hole in his chest. He called my name a few times. I wasn't sure if he was asking for me - that he didn't realize I was with him - or if he was asking for a little extra reassurance. That he wanted me to push his hair back and tell him he'd be okay, because that's what I did whenever he'd call for me.

Other than my name, not a whole lot of what he said made sense. I heard something about Illinois and I think that maybe he asked for his dad once. I didn't know what to say to that, since his dad had died when we were on the campaign trail. Belatedly I wondered if he wasn't asking if he was going to be joining his dad or something. I'm glad I didn't think that in the back of that ambulance, because I probably would have yelled at him for it. The last thing Josh needed was me yelling at him for anything, but the idea that he may have been resigning himself to die pissed me off like very little had in a long, long time. I heard him say something about Gage Whitney, which made me smile a little. Of all the times for him to finally remember where I was working when he came to get me.

Then there was more chaos. We stopped with a lurch and lights exploded in on us and Josh's hand was ripped from mine as they moved him into the hospital. I sat stunned for a second. By the time I was able to move again, Josh had been taken into the hospital and I was running to catch up. As I hit the door I heard him call my name again. I started swearing at myself for not being there, for letting him get more scared and confused than he already was. "I'm here, Josh!" I yelled from the back of the crowd I was getting swallowed in. C.J. and Toby had gotten in before I did, and they were in the car behind us.

My heart was working overtime. Like it thought it could pump enough blood for Josh and me both. It occurred to me that I should find out my blood type and donate if we were a match. Well, I should donate anyway, but especially if   
we were a match.

I pushed past people - Leo had appeared from somewhere - it occurred to me that Leo should be back at the White House, what didn't I know? - and got back to Josh's side. He was trying to move, kept pulling his head up, which I knew he wasn't supposed to do, but apparently that didn't register for him. He was saying something about not going to a meeting. Something about… New Hampshire? Oh God. "We went to New Hampshire. We both did. You came and got   
me." I went with you, because even a partnership at a remarkable law firm and an engagement to a 'society girl' wasn't enough to keep me from getting caught up in your infectious excitement.

And then he was gone. Whisked behind more doors and more lights and more people. And I was just another guy in the hall.

I stood at the door, trying to see in, but they'd gone around a corner and there was really nothing to watch, until Leo came up and mumbled something to me. I knew I needed to ask why Leo was at the hospital at all, but I had the uncomfortable feeling that someone had wrapped about nine wool scarves around my head. I couldn't hear well and my vision was fuzzy on the edges. I think one of those scarves had been shoved in through my ears and wrapped around my brain, because everything was fuzzy there too.

The look I gave Leo must have telegraphed exactly how confused I felt, because suddenly there was a nurse there and more hands going through my hair, looking for a bump or blood that my dark hair would cover. "No, no, I'm fine," I pushed the nurse back. "I just… where's the men's room?" I asked quickly, suddenly needing to know.

I followed a fuzzy, wavering finger across the hall as fast as I could move without falling flat on my face or my ass. I didn't even make it to a stall. I wrenched on a sink and threw up everything I'd even thought about eating for the past month.

There was a hand on my back after a while, but at the time I couldn't look up or say anything.

When I could look up and breathe again, Leo was there handing me a cool, damp hospital-issue washcloth.

"Shock's a bitch, isn't it?" he asked me kindly.

I nodded numbly, still not finding the words to find out why he was there. I hadn't called. Maybe C.J. or Toby had. But how had he gotten there so fast? I could only conclude that he was there when we arrived. But I couldn't find my voice long enough to whisper "why?"

"Better?" he asked.

I nodded again.

"Good we need to talk."

Leo led me out of the bathroom and into one of the smaller family counseling rooms. As he shut the door he said, "First off all, the President is going to be fine."

I looked up sharply and Leo's eyes went wide for a second and then softened. "He's going to be fine. He was hit in the side, but he never lost consciousness and he didn't lose a whole lot of blood from what I can see. In fact, he faked it so well, we were on our way back to the White House until Secret Service realized something was wrong about half way back. He's going into surgery and should be out in just a few hours."

I nodded again. It seemed to be all I was capable of all of a sudden. I felt as useless as one of those stupid little wobble-head dogs that people put in their back windshield.

"Sam," Leo was saying quietly. "I have to get back to the White House. I have to meet with half the planet. You've known Josh a long time, right?"

Another nod. I was a speechwriter for the goddamn President of the United States and I couldn't find a single word to express myself.

"I knew Josh's dad, so I've probably known him longer than you have, but I really think you know him better."

My gut clenched. I knew where this was going and the vice around my head was turned another few degrees. Don't make me do this, don't put this on me, don't make me do this was all I could think.

"I'm going to call his mom as soon as I get back to the White House. If she hasn't heard by now, it won't be long, but with the airports being closed, it's going to take a while for her to find a way to get here. Sam, someone needs to be here to make decisions for Josh until he can do it for himself."

I hung my head. Neither of us would say the words. Neither of us would actually articulate that if it came down to making decisions for Josh it would be because we needed to decide if he lived or died. If he became an organ donor or not. I slouched in my chair.

"Sam, I don't know anyone he'd trust more."

The damn wobble dog struck again. I didn't want the job. God, I didn't want the job. But Leo was right. Josh trusted me.

I must have looked as gray and ashen as I felt, because Leo grabbed my arm again. When I surfaced from the downward spiral my thoughts had been on, Leo was saying my name in a way that told me that he'd said it more than once already.   
I shook myself back to the moment. Josh was going into surgery. He'd be okay. It wouldn't come to this. He'd be okay.

Leo nodded. "I'll talk to the hospital staff on my way out. Why don't you go rinse your face off again and join everyone in the other room."

Damn wobble-dog. At this point even I was starting to worry about where my voice had gone. I knew that I'd eventually have to leave the secret service perimeter and that as soon as I did, there'd be press. And I'd have to be able to say something to them. I'm the goddamn deputy director of communications. I needed to communicate dammit!

I felt so useless.

I stood up and headed back to the bathroom. As I dragged myself down the hall, I shoved my hands in my pockets. C.J.'s necklace was still there. I'd pulled it off my watch and shoved it there so I could give it back. Then Toby started yelling and C.J. and I started running…

I fingered the cool metal links.

Maybe not entirely useless.

I wandered around for a while after I washed my face. When I started looking around again, I noticed that Leo had left. I assumed he'd talked to the charge nurse or whoever about me signing papers for Josh, so I didn't ask. I   
went up and down halls, found the cafeteria. Found the idea of eating or drinking anything utterly revolting. I did get a pack of gum to try and get the taste of bile out of the back of my mouth.

Eventually one of the Secret Service guys found me and kindly herded me back up to where C.J., Charlie, Toby and everyone were waiting. Apparently Mrs.… Dr. Bartlett had come in and explained that the President was going to be fine. She then explained what had happened to Josh and how long he'd be in surgery. When I came in the room, C.J. grabbed me by the elbow and steered me into a corner and caught me up on everything. I nodded a lot, but still hadn't   
found my voice. As shaken as she was, C.J. was still trying to be strong for me. I guess how much this was affecting me was pretty apparent. She hugged me and told me everything would be okay before leading me over to sit on a chair   
near her.

Dr. Bartlett asked me if I had any questions and I just shook my head. Still no words, but at least the wobble-dog had learned a new trick.

Leo sent some junior staffer whose name I didn't know and still don't know over with a clean shirt for me and my briefcase. I think he brought Toby some stuff too, but I wasn't really looking.

I hadn't noticed the blood on my shirt or my jacket. Between the bullet hole and the blood, the jacket was a total write off, so I took it and the shirt and balled them up and stuffed them in one of those big hospital hampers   
after I changed. I put my tie back on so I'd be somewhat passable when the press caught me, but that was mostly just functioning on instinct. When you worked at the White House, you weren't afforded 'bad hair days.'

I grabbed my briefcase and went back into the waiting room. I was drawing little abstract patterns on a note pad for a while when C.J. came over and sat next to me. She told me that Josh was strong and he'd pull through. I smiled at   
the encouragement, but still couldn't make my voice work. Besides C.J. didn't know Josh the way I knew Josh. C.J. didn't know how Josh and I met.

When most people figure out that Josh and I have a history, we tell them we met at school. Which is true enough. What we don't tell them is that we met in… in a hospital, not too unlike this one.

I went to a special corporate law program for pre-law students at Yale the summer after my sophomore year at Princeton. Josh had just started law school and had stayed the summer to get ahead in his classes so he could take a few more electives. We were waiting for a movie at the theater near campus. Something big was coming out that Friday night - I've asked Josh, he can't remember the title either. Anyway, we were in line waiting for it. Not together, we didn't know each other then. I was with Lisa and he was with some buddies of his. We all leaned against the building as we waited for them to open for ticket sales and chatted with the people we were with and the people around us.

Then a girl, one of about eight in the giggling pack in front of Lisa and me screamed. The next thing I saw was the blinding headlights of a car jumping the curb and plowing into the crowd.

Josh got hit from behind and went up onto the hood and into the windshield. Two of the guys he was with were pinned against the building and crushed. I pushed Lisa out of the way and she escaped unharmed, but I had hit the ground hard, earning me a little road rash and a few shallow cuts on my arm and face.

I sent Lisa to call the paramedics while I ran up to check on Josh and the driver. The driver turned out to be completely shit faced and only had a bruise from his airbag deploying. Josh had cuts from the windshield and a clearly   
broken leg.

Not knowing what else to do, I made him stay still until the paramedics could assess him for spinal injuries. I stayed there, with one hand on his shoulder, introducing myself and talking about all kinds if inane shit like classes and how well the Dodgers were doing that year just to keep him still.

God, what a place to meet someone. At a freak car accident. When the paramedics got there, they pressed me into service, asking me what happened, handing me the I.V. bag to hold and getting me to help lift the backboard onto the stretcher. There were about seven injuries all told from that incident, and the school only had two ambulances. They took Josh and me and one of the giggling girls who got hit with a sign that fell when the car hit the building in the   
first ambulance.

They braced his leg in the ambulance. Gave him some kind of pain shot, warned him it would hurt like hell and jerked and jammed it around. I don't know what possessed me, but I took his hand. Held his hand while they did it. Just so he wouldn't be alone I guess.

His leg was a mess. They had to put pins in it and stuff for a while. I remember that I'd go visit him in the hospital every other day or so. I was never sure why I couldn't just walk away from him, but I couldn't. When he was finally released from the hospital he had this huge metal brace and crutches and the whole nine yards. It turned out that he lived about three blocks from me in one of the apartment complexes not far from my building. So I started giving him a ride to and from campus each day. He felt bad, of course, so he insisted on making it up to me. I told him not to be silly, but Josh will be… Josh. So I let him buy lunch each Friday, since we both finished classes at one.

Hell of a way to start a friendship.

Hell of a way to end one too.

I derailed that train of thought as fast as I could. He survived that; he'll survive this. When we'd been in the emergency room that first time, they'd put us in the same room. He was on more morphine than most of the critical   
ward and finally feeling no pain of his own.

They poured what they insisted was betadine, but felt more like citric acid on my cuts and cleaned them out, and he called me names. Made me laugh. I should have been pissed at some guy I didn't know making fun of me as they cleaned small rocks and bits of glass out of my skin, but I couldn't be. I just kept laughing. His leg ended up   
being broken in three places, but he was making me laugh to get over a few little cuts, only one   
of which even left a scar.

I didn't know I loved him back then. But I did. It was different. It wasn't at all sexual. I had Lisa and I was happy with her. I loved being with Lisa in every sense of the word. But the time I spent eating cold pizza and   
drinking beer with Josh while we poured over our textbooks or threw popcorn at the t.v. screen (we gave up on the theater) were really great too. I missed him horribly when I headed back to Princeton in August.

I never realized that it was more than just missing a good friend. I had friends. Lots of them. But I still found myself picking up the phone on the weekends Lisa went home to New York to see what he was up to, if he could get away or if I should jump on a train to New Haven and later D.C. Which was great for a while. We saw each other every few months, but then I was getting ready for the Bar and he was getting more involved in things on Capital Hill.

We kept in touch. E-mails almost every day, birthday cards and Christmas presents. We didn't see each other much though and I missed him. I was floored when I heard he was standing in my office at Gage Whitney. It had been almost   
two years since I'd seen him last. And that time was because he drafted me into some damn bike ride across the state of Iowa. He'd taken up bike riding as part of his physical therapy and decided this Ragbride thing was a good idea for   
both of us. I've almost forgiven him for the way I limped and creaked for the three weeks following that ride.

Josh was strong. He'd beat this. He had to. I needed him too much.

I heard the door open and someone was starting to drone on about how long Josh would be in surgery and how we could go home. Like hell. Twelve hours. They were going to be cutting into him and sewing up and reconstructing for twelve   
hours. I knew I couldn't possibly stay the whole time, no matter how much I wanted to. This was a press magnet. They'd eventually need Toby and me to go back and write all the magic words for C.J. And as much as I didn't want to go do my job, I would have wanted to go do her job even less. I could look like I hadn't slept in over twenty-four hours - which incidentally, I hadn't - and still do the best I could do under the circumstances. I didn't have that added layer of crap to deal with. If I started crying while writing, no one would know. If I needed to back up and rewrite, rephrase I could; no one would know if I slipped up. I could pass anything I wrote to someone else for a read-through to make sure I didn't have any glaring errors or anything. C.J. had to go in front of flashbulbs and news cameras for the entire world and if she made a mistake, the whole world would know.

Donna came in then. I couldn't look at her. Donna and I bicker a lot, but we truly like each other. I should have thought to call. I should have told Leo to grab her if she was still at work. She shouldn't have had to hear about   
any of it on the news. I couldn't look at her. When she smiled at hearing that the President would be okay, I almost started crying, because that's when I realized that she had no idea. That it was possible that the news hadn't picked   
up on what happened with Josh yet. C.J. hadn't done her first press briefing and they were probably just running with what made bigger news. What had more lights and sirens. More pomp and circumstance.

It didn't seem fair that Josh would be in surgery for a total of something like fourteen hours and he would be a footnote to the President's two or three hour exploratory. He'd be in recovery for weeks if not months, I   
assumed. But I was willing to bet he'd fade out of the media spotlight in about two weeks. If the President got indigestion that started anywhere near the sight of his injury for the next year it would be front-page news.

I tried to swallow my rising anger. This wouldn't help anyone. I knew that no one out there chose to get shot. No one chose to be hurt less or more than anyone else. It wasn't the president's fault that he wasn't hurt as badly as Josh, but that he was more high profile. C.J. and I exchanged looks. She was waiting for me to say something, but must have seen something in my eyes that told her that I couldn't. Toby finally stepped in. I took deep breaths and tried to meet Donna's eyes as he and C.J. filled her in. I watched while she collapsed into a chair and C.J. rubbed her back reassuringly.

I hated myself for not being there for her. Donna and I have had this very bizarre subliminal competition for Josh's attention going on for years. It was never a… romantic thing… but I couldn't help feel slightly discarded when he spent a lot of time with her or when they were at their usual bantering and bickering. And I knew from the looks I sometimes got, that she felt the same way. Donna came on board the election not long after I had, so I've known her for a while, so I felt like shit for not being able to be strong for her.

I thought about the somewhat odd relationship I had with Donna. The competition. It wasn't… well, I didn't think we were competing over Josh, but over time I started to wonder.

I'd gone all the way through grade school and high school assuming I was straight. I liked girls, ergo I was straight. Then I ended up meeting this guy, Alex, on-line who was an open bisexual. He didn't push a lifestyle on anyone; he just wasn't shy about how he lived. And it made me think. I'd always put people in two boxes - gay or straight. You were one or the other. And since I liked girls, I assumed I fit in the straight box.

But then I thought about being bisexual. I'd never joined in the other kids when they'd pick on an effeminate guy at school. I didn't freak out when there was some sort of homosexual overtone in a movie or a book. I just figured I was even more of a bleeding heart liberal than most folks.

Then one night I was thinking about Josh. He'd called, saying he was going to work as a staffer for some Congressman. I wasn't even sure what state the guy was from, but I didn't think it was Connecticut. Anyway, hearing from Josh   
and getting email from Alex in the same night got me thinking. What if I was bi? I thought about all the time I spent with Josh when we'd both been in school. How much I missed him when he'd gone on. Was it possible that I had a crush on him and didn't realize it because he was another guy? I rolled the question around in my head for a while, but for a few months all I could come up with was 'well, maybe, and if so, so what?'. I knew that the idea that it might have been a crush didn't bother me. Okay, so maybe I was bi, but I was with Lisa and I liked that too.

When Josh came to get me for the campaign, my excitement at being with him was more to do with getting myself out of a job that I was starting to hate, because it worked against every principle I had and an engagement I felt cornered into. Late at night, my first day with the campaign, in a hotel room I was sharing with Josh, because the hotel was full by the time I came on board, I could admit that I'd gotten engaged to Lisa to get my mom off my back. I   
love my mom to death, but if I had had to hear, "So when are you going to set a date?" one more time, there would have been problems. So in the end, little-old-non-confrontational Sam just decided that Lisa wasn't so bad and just did it.

What was I thinking?

Lisa deserved better than 'getting married to you beats a kick in the teeth' and frankly, so did I.

But it was never about having a crush on Josh, which I still hadn't decided if I did or didn't, though dropping my entire life the way I did and running away to New Hampshire should have been a big hint. I just liked hanging around the guy. He was fun. He was there for me when I needed someone. For anything. He reminded me why I'd given up the partnership and told me, several times, that I could do better than Lisa. She'd always been a little too manequinesque for Josh, too society for his quiet New England ways. He was always very polite to her and we'd double dated often when he was still in school, but I knew he'd never be truly upset for me if things didn't work out. Not that I thought he'd be upset if they did, just that he'd be the pick-me-up-dust-me-off-send-me-back-out-there sort if something did happen, long before he'd offer to go try and patch things up between us.

Then Donna happened. I never in a million years wanted to date Donna. She's pretty and she's… cute, but she was needy in a similar way to Lisa. When Josh told me how she came to the campaign I mentally painted a big 'don't go there' sign on her forehead. I was jumping in to do speechwriting for a possible future President of the United States. I didn't need any other complications. And when Donna heard that I'd recently ended a very long relationship and engagement, she gave me a big sisterly hug and told me that it was okay if I needed some time to get over her. Nice of her to hand me an out.

I don't think Josh ever wanted to date her either, though I jumped in with everyone else when it came to teasing them about it. It was all in fun though. Josh adopted her. She was down on her luck and needed a place to go. I knew Josh had lost a sister when he was younger and had, in some pretty subliminal ways, been looking for someone to take her place. Joanie had been his older sister, and he treated Donna more like a little sister, but there it was.

And then this odd rivalry started between us. We picked on each other more to get Josh's attention and see whom he'd side with than because we didn't like each other. The three of us spent a lot of time together on the campaign trail, sharing cars, meals or drinks. I knew Donna pretty well. Almost as well as Josh did.

And right now I couldn't even get up to give her a hug or tell her it'd be okay. I've never been able to lie well. A terrible failing in a politician, I know, but I couldn't stand the idea of going over and telling Donna - who would almost certainly believe me - that Josh would be okay when I didn't know that for sure for myself.

The guy who'd been briefing us tried to kick us out again. We sat there silently for a moment and I pulled my pad out again and scribbled a quick note to C.J. "I'm staying." She just nodded and gathered up her things to go prepare for the first press briefing.

God, how I didn't want her job.

Two and a half hours later Dr. Bartlet was called out of the room by a nurse. Half an hour after that she came back in, smiling and telling us that outside of a dozen stitches or so, the President was just fine. A little groggy   
from the anesthesia, but awake and already trying to get a situation report.

She looked right at me when she said, "I haven't told him about Josh yet. He's resting now and when he wakes up he may ask to see some of you. If he does, please don't mention anything yet. If he asks directly, come get me."

She couldn't look at me when she added, "Josh is in a surgical theater with an observation room. If anyone wants to go see him, you can. But I need to warn you, it's not easy seeing a friend's chest open in front of you."

I stood up. I needed to see his face. I needed to see if he looked any more calm asleep than he had when they'd rolled him out of the trauma room.

"You want to go see him?" Dr. Bartlet asked me quietly. Yet again, all I could do was nod. Charlie had returned from the residence and rose to accompany us. I looked at Donna, but she shook her head and sniffled. I tried to smile   
reassuringly as I left.

Dr. Bartlet explained the idea of bypass to us as we walked. That a machine was pumping his blood and oxygenating it for him, so that his heart and lungs could take a time out for repairs.

I found that I didn't like the idea of by-pass on a philosophical level. On an intellectual level I knew it was his only chance to survive, but on a … philosophical or spiritual level the idea that Josh's heart and lungs   
weren't doing their assigned jobs meant that he was technically dead.

I found my voice for the first time in hours. The question seemed ludicrous, I was sure there was a plan, but I needed to know. "What happens if the power goes out?"

Dr. Bartlet smiled at me. From anyone else it would have been a patronizing smile, but from her it let me know that she understood where I was coming from, that at some point she'd had that question or a similar one herself. "The   
hospital has a generator. And a back up generator. It kicks in in about fifteen seconds."

"Fifteen seconds? But if Josh -"

"Can you hold your breath for fifteen seconds?" she cut me off.

I nodded. I'd been a swimmer in high school and college. I could - at least back in those days - hold my breath for over a minute. "But what about his heart?"

"The human brain can go for up to four minutes without oxygen before damage begins. "

"Right. Thanks."

We reached a door and a Secret Service agent opened it for us. Dr. Bartlet stepped in front of Charlie and me. "I meant what I said before. This is a teaching hospital, so we'll have a good view of the operating field when we   
go in there. If that's a little more of Josh than you really need to see, just step back out. There's no shame in that."

I took a deep breath and stepped in.

All I could see of him was his face and well… his heart and lungs. Everything else was covered in blue surgical drapes.

Part of my brain detached from the rest. Suddenly the heart and lungs I was looking at weren't attached to Josh. I'd always found the human body fascinating, and had as a kid, entertained the idea of being a surgeon. But now, I couldn't associate all the blood and tissue exposed to me as a part of Josh. Josh was too vital for that. Too alive and spirited to be reduced to a set of organs held together by tissue as thin as skin. Maybe it's movies and television… they show so much now, cable specials on open-heart surgery, dramas about emergency rooms and horror movies where the fake blood budget is higher than the Craft Services budget. I didn't see those organs as being his. I mean, I was never meant to be looking at the inside of Josh's chest. I had to remind myself that it was real and not some really good special effects job. That if they didn't get his heart and lungs repaired and restarted, there wouldn't be a take two.

One of the surgeons was pulling a pair of long forceps from Josh's chest as we watched silently. He held it up to the light and examined it from all angles. A nurse brought a small metal tray and the doctor dropped it into   
the tray. It hit the metal and rolled to one side. It didn't squish or slide. It rolled.

Dr. Bartlet was smiling.

"What was that?" Charlie asked.

"The bullet."

"So that's good, right? I mean, all they have to do is close everything up?"

"Well, yes," Mrs. Bartlet said, "But that's the tricky part."

"Where are his ribs?" I asked suddenly. It seemed odd that I could stare straight at his heart.

There was a teaching skeleton in the corner and Mrs. Bartlet dragged it over. "They did what's call a sternal incision. They sawed his sternum in half," she drew a line with her finger down the middle of his breastbone on the   
skeleton.

"They cut it in half?!" I'd fractured a rib once when my seatbelt locked when my car had slid off a snowy upper New York road and into a ditch. I'd developed a cough from walking the four miles in wet snow to get to a service   
station and I had thought I was going to die. Lisa ended up driving me to the hospital at something like four in the morning to get me some codeine so I could sleep, since taking a deep breath shifted the cracked rib and coughing shot   
a pain through me unlike anything I'd experienced up to that point.

And that was just one rib with a bruise and a hairline fracture in it. They cut his breastbone in half.

"They'll wire it back in place when they're done. It's certainly not comfortable, but it's actually less painful than broken ribs," Dr. Bartlet explained. "They have to get in there to repair the damage," she added softly.

"It's just that… I cracked a rib once… thought it was going to kill me." I quickly told her about the snowstorm on my way up to see Lisa at her parents.

Dr. Bartlet moved to sit in one of the chairs in the observation room and motioned me into another. "Sam, Josh will have a long and … fairly painful recovery in front of him. When he first wakes up they'll give him something for the pain, probably something to help him breath, some antibiotics… But it is going to be a while before he's up and moving again."

Despite the bad news I was mentally latching on to her tone, her word choices. 'Josh will have…' He will… Not an 'if' statement. A 'will' statement. "So they're sure he'll make it out of this?"

She looked at the ground and was silent. I regretted asking immediately. I liked it better the way I had worked it out in my head. "Not for sure, no," she answered softly. "But things look good. I can't really see the monitors too well from here, but the O.R. staff seems very calm. They're moving slowly and carefully, like they're following a game plan, not rushing around and trying to keep everything going. It looks good, Sam, but I won't make promises he," she pointed to Josh, "may not let me keep. It's going to be a long operation and a long recovery. But it looks very promising right now."

I nodded. I wanted desperately to be with him. To hold his hand. To stroke his hair or his cheek. Josh is strong and he's brave, but even the strong and the brave get scared. And although I know he wouldn't have been conscious of my presence, I wanted to do something. I wanted to call him names to make him forget the pain. I wanted to just sit and talk quietly to him, tell him he'd be okay and that I was there, to say again all the things I'm not sure he heard   
me say in the ambulance.

I listened half-heartedly as she explained about what would happen during and after the surgery, about the chest tube that would suck out blood and air and anything else that got in the way of his lung re-expanding. About the wire they'd put him back together with. It occurred to me to ask if he'd have to have that removed or if he'd be setting off metal   
detectors for the rest of his life, but it seemed petty, so I didn't.

I understood, optimistically, half of what she said. It sounded like the worst worry was the damage to the artery taking blood into his lung. For whatever reason they couldn't use a synthetic or do some sort of transplant. They had to fix what was left in there. I didn't follow a lot of that conversation, but I didn't really care. I knew just enough to know that it would be hours of pulling pieces of him out of places they didn't belong and even more hours of   
trying to put together the pieces that were left.

After a while, Charlie started distracting himself by asking Dr. Bartlet to explain, well… everything. When she was going over the difference between internal and external stitches I slipped out.

I wandered around for a while, showing my credentials when needed to move in and out of the secret service perimeter. I had a vague sense of wishing I smoked so I'd have an excuse for why I was standing in a blindingly bright ambulance bay in my shirt sleeves. I wondered if I looked as bad as I felt.

I'd gone into the waiting room earlier and the only people in there were Zoey and Toby and some more secret service guys. Leo was back meeting with the Security Advisors and the Cabinet and C.J had headed back to the West Wing to start preparing initial briefing notes. Even the various assistants who'd been there were gone. Charlie was still with Dr. Bartlet, Mrs. Landingham had gone back with to the White House to clear the president's calendar. Margaret left with Leo and Donna had gone to see Josh. I wished I'd been around when she decided to do that. I hadn't seen her in the halls, but I'd wandered around for a while, so I was fairly sure that it was too late to go chase her down and   
warn her off. In some ways I was regretting seeing Josh like that and I really didn't think Donna was going to handle it well if… Well, if. I'd heard no end of shit from my father when I refused to go to my grandmother's open casket wake when I was fourteen. I couldn't convince him that I wouldn't go because I loved her too much to see her like that. My last memory of her was of me sitting on the floor of her apartment working on an English report and explaining the pros and cons of mandatory drug testing in sports to her while she made dinner. That was the   
memory I wanted to keep. I didn't want to think of her cold and pale and still in a coffin each time her name came up.

And though I was wishing, hoping and praying with everything in my soul that I'd see Josh up and talking and walking again, I knew there was a chance. And I knew the last memory I'd have of him would be one of his chest split open before me. I didn't want Donna to share that memory with me. I kicked at a cigarette butt on the ground. Nothing to be done for it now.

After a little while I saw Toby leave through the emergency room door and get into a waiting motorcade car. Probably going back to work with C.J. on the press release.

I was grateful that they'd let me stay. It wasn't that I couldn't write about what had happened. It wasn't a particularly difficult thing to explain. Leo would tell us what we could release and we'd release it. It wasn't a   
campaign speech or the State of the Union or some policy announcement we needed to curry favor for. What had happened was ugly. It was raw and ugly and cruel and the words to explain it could be too.

Just to be doing something, I mentally wrote C.J.'s next press briefing in my head. 'The president's surgery was completed at 12:30 a.m. He's resting comfortably in the company of his wife and youngest daughter, Zoey. The   
surgeons reported that the bullet caused only minor damage, and laproscopic examination revealed no serious tissue or organ damage. Josh Lyman is still in surgery to repair a collapsed lung and lacerated artery -' or was it the vein. I couldn't remember if they'd said it was the blood vessel going into or out of his heart. I reworded it. 'Josh Lyman is still undergoing surgery to repair a collapsed lung and lacerated blood vessel between his heart and lung.' I   
mentally erased the sentence. That would just leave the press asking if it was the vein or artery, which I didn't know, so I tried to find a better way to say it. Maybe C.J. knew. She probably had notes. So maybe I could leave it that way.

I shook my head. No wonder Toby was writing this. 'Surgery is progressing well, but it's still to early to predict an outcome.' I concluded.

"Sam?"

I jumped. "Geez!" I had no idea Mrs. Landingham had come back, let alone that she was standing right next to me. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't see you there." I fought down the adrenaline surge. There was so much   
adrenaline in my system from everything that had happened that night already that I could feel the knots forming in my muscles. I knew I wouldn't sleep for days and that I'd be cranky as hell as it started to wear off.

"I don't think you'd have heard the Marine Band if they'd been standing on top of that ambulance right there," she said, smiling at me.

I sighed and tried to smile back. "I was just writing C.J.'s next press briefing in my head."

"Really?" she asked disbelieving.

"Honest," I said, putting my right hand over my heart.

"You and Josh Lyman have a long history," she stated.

"Yep." I supposed I was supposed to elaborate, but I had no idea where to start.

"It's getting a bit chilly, isn't it?" she let me off the hook.

"Yep." Great, I had my voice back, but I literally couldn't string two words together. I realized that perhaps Mrs. Landingham was trying to talk to me. She and the president have a long history too. I knew she was his secretary when he was Governor of New Hampshire and I was pretty sure she was with him when he was in the House. If it went further back than that, I didn't know about it, but something about the way she took him to task over what he ate, how he spoke and his sense of humor (or lack of it in her estimation) spoke of an incredibly long acquaintance.

Before I could say anything, she lay her hand on my arm. "Why don't you come inside?"

"Yeah, sure." It was easier to let other people make decisions for me, tell me what to do and when to do it.

I followed her back into the waiting room and fell into the same chair I'd been in earlier.


	2. Coping Universe I: To Strive (2/4)

Not long after I'd gone back and sat down, someone from Secret Service came in to interview me. He introduced himself as Jeff Ridgeland and showed me into another one of those little conference rooms, like Leo and I had gone into when Josh had been taken into surgery. There was a stenographer and tape recorder at the table and Jeff pointed me at the chair nearest the tape recorder. I fell into it with a sigh,

"Mr. Seaborn, I apologize for asking you to go through this so soon, but as you may have heard, we have a report of an accomplice on the ground. We need to get everyone's statements while their recollections are fresh."

"My name is Sam," I muttered wearily, ignoring the rest of what he said for the moment. I never much cared for being called Mr. Seaborn. It made me look for my dad. Unless it was someone I didn't like. They could call me Mr. Seaborn.

"Okay, Sam, we're going to make this as easy as we can, just answer the questions to the best of your recollection. Don't worry about trying to give the answers you think we want or answers that will match anyone else's. We expect   
people to have differing accounts. Let us worry about sorting them out and putting together a coherent picture."

"Okay," I whispered.

"What was your first indication there was trouble?"

I thought about it. So much happened at once. "Um… I guess when I saw Zoey's Secret Service girl - what's her name again?" I knew her name, I knew it, but I couldn't seem to remember it.

"Gina Toscano?"

"Yeah, Gina moved Zoey from one side of her to the other. She told her to move so I started looking around to see why she did that. I thought it would be… a reporter or something. Zoey's been having a few problems with reporters   
bugging her at school. They aren't supposed to do that." I stopped talking, realizing I was straying from the subject.

"What did you see when you looked around?"

"Just the crowd." I took a deep breath. "At first it was just the crowd and then I heard a shot and someone yelled 'Gun'."

Jeff leaned forward. "You said, 'at first it was just the crowd.' What else did you see?"

"Someone yelled 'Gun' and I heard the first shot. I looked up and saw… in the window, in… I don't know the name of the building… but I saw a flash and I just…" I didn't really want to tell him about pushing C.J. down. What if they thought I was associated with the shooter? What if they thought I somehow knew where to look? "I saw a flash and … I don't know, something about it spooked the hell out of me, C.J. Cregg was right there and I…"

"You pushed her down?"

"Yeah, I… I saw the flash, but it couldn't have been the bullet that shot out the window over our heads, I mean, no one can move that fast, right? How many shots were fired?" He offered me a glass of water and I took a small sip, shock was setting in again, or something, because as I mentally replayed my words, I realized that I was not only not making sense, but my delivery was getting a little hysterical.

"We've got agents covering the ground now, looking for shells. We know that four people were hit -"

"Four?!" I almost choked on the ice water.

"A woman in the crowd was hit in the leg; she's at another hospital; she's going to be fine," he reassured me.

"The President, Josh, that girl and who else?"

"Ron Butterfield was on the President.

He took one in the hand. He's in surgery to do some reconstruction right now."

I nodded. "Anyway, I didn't think, I just pushed her out of the way. She bumped her head. Has a doctor seen her? She hit kind of hard." I knew a paramedic had seen her, but I wanted to be sure. I could still here the hollow   
thump of her skull on the concrete.

"C.J.'s okay Sam. We've already spoken to her. She's a little mixed up, she doesn't remember who pushed her down, so we did have a doctor give her a quick neural exam. They said that it was probably shock and the bump and a little temporary amnesia isn't a big surprise. They think she'll remember when things calm down and she has a few minutes to think about it."

I nodded. I liked this guy. Josh tries to do that thing that kids do to the guards at Buckingham Palace with the Secret Service - get them to smile, to look away from whatever it is they're watching. He thinks they all have a pole   
surgically implanted up their ass when they get the job. But I liked this guy. If and when Josh had to give a statement, I wanted this guy to take it.

I took a deep breath. "It was very, very loud and chaotic for… for what seemed like forever, and then it was… quieter and we seemed to be trying to pick up the pieces… find everyone."

"Joel McCallan said you were trying to round everyone up when the shooting died down. Can you tell me about that?" Jeff asked.

"Who's Joel McCallan?" I found myself asking before deciding I really didn't care.

"The agent you stopped to get an update."

"Oh. I should probably pay more attention to who you guys are. I mean, other than just 'that secret service guy over there'."

He smiled. "Our job is to not be there, you know? We don't take it personally."

"Yeah, well, I do. You guys are the ones who took down the shooters tonight before they could hit anyone else. Ron took a bullet for the president. You guys are trained to die for him and we can't even be bothered to learn your   
names. It's not right."

"Well, now you know two of us. Tell me about finding everyone."

I shook my head. "I wish I could say I was being a take-charge kind of guy, Jeff, I really do, but what it all came down to was… I needed to know where my friends were."

"So you started rounding everyone up?"

"Well, sort of… I found out where the President was, and in the process learned where Leo and Zoey were. I saw C.J… and then… Toby found Josh. It wasn't me, it was Toby,"

"You rode in the ambulance with Mr. Lyman?"

"Yeah."

"But before that, you established where everyone was, right?"

"We were all right there at that point."

"Charlie Young?"

"Toby said that he'd seen Charlie before he found Josh."

Jeff smiled a little, "I'm making a point, did he volunteer the information that he'd seen Mr. Young, or did you ask him?"

"I asked him."

"Sam, everyone I've spoken with so far has been pretty impressed with how you handled things out there. You should be too. You found out where everyone was, and you accompanied Mr. Lyman to the hospital. Everything else was our   
job. You did yours and then some."

"Thanks," I muttered, not sure I believed him.

"Okay, let's go back to what you saw. When you looked through the crowd, did you see anything unusual?"

"I heard Gina say that she saw a signal man. And… now I can't tell you if I saw it too, or if I'm just… imagining I did to feel less…"

"Powerless?" he suggested.

"Yeah."

"Tell me what you think you saw."

"I heard Gina say it was a kid in a baseball cap. I saw a guy… white guy, cap, and just… a look I didn't like. But… I don't know. He had this look, but he wasn't looking at the President, so I don't think this is your guy."

"Tell me anyway. You don't think he was looking at the president? Where was he looking?"

"I don't know. Behind the President… at one of us maybe. Hey, I have question. The guy in that building, shooting at us… at the president… He'd have to be a pretty good shot, right? I mean, would some nearsighted crackpot with a bee-bee gun really try to shoot the president from five floors away?" This was bugging me now. I hadn't thought about it previously, but now that I was, it was bugging me.

"He was a pretty good shot, yeah."

"So… Josh… Josh got called over to talk to someone before we left. He was way behind the rest of us, way, way behind the president. Was this guy just taking potshots at the crowd or what?!" I was on my feet and yelling before I realized it. "Did you see where he was? He was still on the stairs!"

"We know, Sam," Jeff said calmly, indicating my chair. "We're working on that. It's one of the reasons we need the signal guy."

"Right. Sorry." I dropped back into my chair.

"It's okay."

"Sorry," I said again, not sure what else to say.

"It's okay," he said again. "I want you to take a minute, close your eyes if it helps, and see if there's anything else you saw or heard that might help us out."

I propped my elbows on the table and closed my eyes. I played the scene over and over in my head. It really was quite short. Finally, I shook my head. "No. I don't think… I can't…" I felt so useless, so powerless.

"It's alright. In the next few days, once you've gotten a little distance, a little sleep, you may come up with something. Let me know. It doesn't matter if it's after we get this other guy or not. If you think it could   
possibly be important, it probably is. He took out a business card and scribbled a number on the back. "That's my voice mail extension, if you want to talk directly to me."

"Thanks." I stood up and shoved the card in my pocket, and felt C.J.'s chain again. "Hey Jeff," I said suddenly. "C.J. doesn't know it was me?"

"She didn't when she was in here."

"If you don't have to… don't tell her, okay?" I moved C.J.'s chain from my pants pocket to my shirt pocket hoping it wouldn't get too tangled. I'd drop it on her desk or mail it to her or something…

"Okay," he said as I left.

&lt;{*}&gt;

 

Once our spontaneous weekends had started to fade away to once in a very great while, Josh and I made it a point to get together at least once or twice a year. One of those trips was supposed to be a skiing trip in Utah. We got there, got checked in and one of the worst blizzards of the decade hit. The first night we got really drunk in the lodge bar, laughing about how there was too much snow to ski. The next morning, we decided that we'd be a little calmer that night. Neither of us were remarkable partygoers, and I have, on occasion, been called a lightweight.

So we were snowed in on a ski trip and what probably turned out to be way too sober that night. We'd gotten a double room, since we really hadn't planned to be in it much, but with the bar being out, we didn't have a whole lot of other places to go. Josh started a fire and we stretched out in front of it with some music on.

I thought we'd fall asleep, but he started telling me about getting to Washington and the job his dad got him through some secretary of something to work for some Senator from somewhere. I knew I should have been more interested, but I was just too relaxed. I let the heat of the fire dance over me and the sound of Josh's voice wash over me. It didn't really matter what he was saying at that point, just that we were together for him to say it to me.

He stopped suddenly, asking me if I was listening.

"Sure. Only one third of the House is expected to vote for a bill legislating federally mandated drug tests and physicals for…" Oops. That's where my memory bottomed out for me.

"OTR Drivers," he filled in for me. "You okay?"

"I was listening, really. I'm sorry. I'm just… I'm tired and I'm comfortable and my mind keeps wandering off."

"To where?" he asked softly.

"You really want to know?"

"Sure"

"Just so you know… I don't expect you to do anything about this, but…" I had to take a deep breath. I figured I was out of my mind for telling him this, but we'd been friends for a long time. Close enough that I knew he wouldn't flip out on me or be angry. The flip side was, I knew him well enough to know that there probably wouldn't be any kind of positive reaction either. "I think I'm in love with you."

Josh just blinked for a minute. "Ah. Okay."

I sat up and looked at him. "That's all?"

"Well, I almost asked if you were sure, but you never struck me at the type to make statements like that unless you were sure," he told me.

"I've thought about it for a long time, I'm pretty sure."

"Okay," he said again, like I'd told him that I was dying my hair blond. The tone of "Well, okay. I don't know quite why you want to do that, but whatever."

We were silent for a long time. I didn't know what I was hoping for in telling him that. I knew he wouldn't be mad at me, but I really didn't know what I hoped to gain. I was sure I'd made him uncomfortable. "Look, I'm sorry I said   
anything. I didn't mean to make things awkward for you. I don't expect anything."

Josh scooted closer to me and put a hand on my back. "It's okay. Really. I'm flattered. But I think Lisa would kick my ass."

I smiled when he did and everything went back to normal.

&lt;{*}&gt;

Nothing really changed in light of my revelation. We still kept up with each other, got together when we could, but by the time I was out of school and working for Gage Whitney, it was pretty tough to plan get-togethers. I never knew when a case would settle and he never knew when the Senator would take time off and he'd be able to get away. Then his dad was diagnosed with lung cancer and all his free time was spent going home. Our emails went from almost daily to   
maybe weekly, but I never once thought he was pulling back from me because of what I'd told him.

Then, just as I was moving through the ranks at Gage Whitney, when I'd gotten engaged to Lisa, when I was pretty certain what direction my life was heading in, he showed up, dripping wet, bouncing and beaming and dragging me away from it to New Hampshire over what we hoped was the best thing that could ever happen to us.

It was almost two o'clock in the morning, back in Manchester when the final poles had closed on the West Coast, when things had been tallied and counted and sealed that they called the election for Jed Bartlet.

The champagne flowed immediately, but I only had a little, since Toby and I had to refine the president-elect's victory remarks before we could really start celebrating. After Illinois I started keeping an eye on Josh when the victory parties broke out. I wondered if he'd always associate them with finding out his dad had died, and I wanted to be sure he was okay. That November night he seemed just fine as he danced - badly - with Donna and Margaret in the corner.

I didn't think he'd been drinking, but then again, Josh has always had the ability to get high on life when things are going well, so I wasn't unduly surprised when he grabbed me and danced me around the room. I let him get away with the goofiness for a minute before pulling away to go in the other room and tighten up the speech with Toby.

When I got into the hall, I leaned against the wall for a minute and calmed myself down. We'd done it. We were on our way to Washington. Josh and I. Life was good.

Then Josh came out looking for me.

"Where're ya goin'?"

"I have to go tighten up the victory speech with Toby." I pointed down the hall.

"Oh, okay."

I started walking away.

"Hey, Sam!"

 

I turned back, smiling at him.

"Remember what you said to me in Utah?"

I actually had to think for a minute. "Yeah."

Josh's smile turned from one of energy and excitement to something softer. "Me too."

I felt sucker punched. I found a smile for him somewhere. "Um. Okay," I said, using the answer he gave me. "I need to go… work on the thing…"

Josh bounced back into the party shouting, "Okay, see you later," as he went.

 

I avoided Josh for a few days after that. As excited as I was about going to Washington, about going with him, I couldn't look at him. Finally, one gray morning not long before we were going to pack up the Manchester campaign office   
and go home to pack up our various apartments, Josh caught me in the coffee shop of the hotel. "Come on," he said nodding at the door.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know yet, come on."

I tossed a couple bucks on the table for my coffee and followed him. He led me back to the elevator bank and back up to his hotel room.

"Josh, what are you doing?"

"Finding out why you're mad at me for what I told you election night."

"I'm not mad," I said quietly. I didn't want to talk about this. It was tough enough living with it.

"So how come you aren't talking to me?"

"I'm not mad," I reiterated.

"So…"

Okay, now I was mad. I wasn't sure why, but Josh pushing the issue pissed me off. "Why did you say that?"

"What? That I love you? Um… maybe because I do?"

"Do you? I mean, now? Really? Or were you just caught up in everything that was happening that night? I mean, it's okay. If you want to … take it back, that's okay. I can understand getting caught up in all the excitement and … I don't know… just saying stuff."

"But Sam," he pushed his hand over his hair. "I do mean it. Are you saying you don't feel that way any more?"

"Why now?" I said with as little venom as I could muster.

"What do you mean?"

"Why now, Josh? Why did you pick the one night that will redefine how we live our lives to tell me that? We've been promised top White House positions in this administration and that means…" I took a deep breath. I didn't want to argue. I wanted to understand, but now I was angry and having a hard time being articulate. "Why wait until there's absolutely nothing we can do about it to tell me that? Do you feel sorry for me? Did you think it was an… easy out? Tell me what I want to hear when there's absolutely no way for it to mean anything... hoping that I'll… I don't know what… be mollified? Why now?"

Josh sat on the edge of the bed looking pale all of a sudden. "I didn't mean to do that to you. I'm sorry. I wasn't… I wasn't thinking about it that way." He opened his mouth like he had more to say, but nothing came out so he just shut it again.

I didn't know what to say either. It seemed absurd that we were mad at each other because we loved each other.

"It wasn't a sudden revelation. I've been thinking about what you said since the night you said it. But, really Sam, I honestly thought you were in love with Lisa too and that would be… so much simpler for you. And back then I didn't know how I felt about it. I knew I liked you. A lot. But I'd never thought about it any further than that. It just… I didn't… I wasn't going to say things I didn't mean. I knew that you wouldn't be happy about me going 'okay whatever', but I knew you'd hate me if I said something I wasn't sure of and then had to back out of it. I couldn't stand that. I had to know how I felt first."

"And you decided last Tuesday?"

"No, actually, I'd decided a few months back. My mom actually got me thinking about it some more when I went out for my dad's funeral. She asked me if I was lonely out here on the road. I told her that I had you. She's been hearing your name off and on for what? Nine years now? So she was happy for me and let it drop, but I started thinking about it. I didn't hesitate to answer her. I wasn't lonely out here because you were here. And then when I thought about going to Washington… about working for the president, that was cool. But then when I thought about working for the president with you I got light headed. I tried to think about what could be better and I couldn't come up with   
anything. So… I tried, in my terribly inept way, to tell you how I felt. I guess I should have given you the long version from the outset."

I smiled at him. He did mean it. I may be the speechwriter, but Josh is eloquent in his own way. When he decides to be honest, to be passionate, there's an elegance in his simplicity. He isn't always looking for the most cosmetic way to say something. He just wants to be sure he's understood. Nothing fancy. Just the truth.

"I still love you, Josh, but…"

"Yeah."

I hated the way his face fell then. "People are going to start looking for things to hang us with as soon as our names hit the papers." I hated myself for being the one to say it. "We can't… we just… it's not fair to the Governor - President," I corrected myself.

"I know. But you know what… so we can't make out on the mall, or hold hands in the office, or whatever, but we can still love each other. We've known each other a long time, Sam, it's never been about sex for us. You're… special… important to me. That's enough for now. We've got four years - eight if we're lucky - of sheer hell in front of us. We probably don't want to try and juggle anything romantic while we're working eighty-hour weeks anyway. But if you need anything, anything, Sam, you can count on me. You know I'll be there, even when we disagree on policy or whatever, I'll be there for you. Because I care. And if people want to get in our faces because we care about each other… bring 'em on."

I smiled and turned to him, not sure how to answer that. It was the best we could hope for. And he had a very good point about how we'd probably never survive a relationship while Bartlet was in office. Better to put it on hold.   
It warmed me through and through that he was saying he'd be there waiting for me on the other side of this administration.

"Come here," he whispered. He put out a hand and I took it. The depression that had set in with both the end of the adreneline rush from the campaign ending and Josh's little drop-in on election night lifted almost completely away as   
he pulled me in for a tight, warm, hug.He tightened his arms around me and put a very chaste kiss on the top of my head. "I love you. And that's enough for now. It's going to be crazy for the next few years. But when it's over… I'll be here."

"Me too." It was such a lame answer after all the confessions he'd made, all of his simple eloquence, but it was all I could come up with.And it worked. We talked a few days later about putting on a good face for the administration. Which meant dating. Women. We knew we'd have to do it and we promised not to deprive ourselves of companionship just because we couldn't be together in the way we wanted to. We'd date. And we'd give each other hell about it. And we'd talk about it to each other. And when we could talk about it somewhere private we'd always end the conversation with "I love you." We'd do what we could until we could do what we wanted, but we never lost sight of the goal.


	3. Coping Universe I: To Strive (3/4)

When I came back into the waiting room, Toby had left and C.J. was on the t.v. giving the first press conference. She looked… awful. I knew we all did. We'd been in the same clothes for more than twenty hours and we'd all ended up on the ground at some point. Because I knew where to look, I could see a slight bump on the side of her head, but no blood. That was good. Her speech was hesitant and halting. She consulted her notes dozens of times, like this   
was a complex economic deal the President had made with a dozen Nobel Lauriates, and not a shooting she'd been in attendance for. I sighed. I'd be even worse. I could barely talk. I was getting better about answering questions put   
directly to me, but starting a conversation was still hard.

The press was being as considerate as they could, I realized. The questions were all phrased carefully if it had anything to do with any of us, and rather harshly when about the shooters. From what I could see, no one was pressing her on issues she either couldn't comment on or didn't have the answers for. I knew that that would change, but we'd have to take our breaks where we could get them.

She'd just stepped off the stage when my name was called by a nurse at the door. I jumped up and ran over, hoping it was word on Josh.

"Leo McGarry and Ron Butterfield have asked the hospital to check over everyone who was in Roslyn. Would you come with me?"

"I'm fine," I snapped, suddenly not wanting to go with her.

"Yeah," she said softly, smiling at me. "Probably, but I tend not to argue with Secret Service Agents with guns, so it'd make my life a whole lot easier if you'd let us do this. It'll be quick, I promise."

I had to smile at her then. She had her marching orders and she was going to follow them, but she wouldn't be an ass in the face of my reluctance if she didn't have to. "Okay."

She led me into a room that had way more equipment than I was comfortable with. I was fine, what the hell did we need all this stuff for?

"This is an ER trauma room, but we're using it as an exam room for now, since it's closer to the waiting room. We've already checked on C.J. Cregg , Toby Ziegler, Charlie Young and Zoey Bartlet. Everyone's fine." She kept talking about things that I would have sworn were covered under doctor/patient confidentiality, but it was nice to hear that everyone would be okay. C.J. had a bump on her head, some road rash on one hand and a scratch on her neck. I didn't volunteer that I knew where the scratch came from. Toby and Charlie got away completely unscathed and I was grateful. Zoey had taken an elbow in the stomach, which was making her a little nauseous and gave her a good-sized bruise, but nothing that wouldn't fade in a day or two. I began wondering what they'd notice about me. And who would be told.

Maggie, the nurse, kept talking as she rolled my sleeve up and took my blood pressure. When she was done, she leaned me back against the bed and had me swing my feet up. She checked my pulse and pupils and asked me if I hurt anywhere. I just shook my head. She told me I was a little shocky, a little dehydrated and 'just generally shaken up.' Either she deduced from the dehydration or Leo had told someone about how I'd thrown up when we first arrived. She told me a   
doctor would be right in to check me over one more time and decide if I needed to be put on an I.V. for a few hours.

She was gracious enough to turn off the bright florescent lights when she left the room and I closed my eyes. Fatigue was warring with adrenaline and I really wasn't sure which would win. When I closed my eyes, bright lights flashed across my eyelids. Police cars from the motorcade, muzzle flashes, camera flashes… they all blurred into a bright red, blood red, swirl. I leaned back into the pathetically thin hospital pillow and tried to quell the nausea and spinning.

I was still trying to get a grip on the axis of the room when a doctor came in. He introduced himself as Dr. Norris and instead of immediately poking at me, he pulled a chair up to the edge of the bed and sat next to me. "Feeling   
sick?"

"A little," I admitted.

"It's shock. I'm going to give you a little compazine for the nausea. And I'm going to have Maggie get you some juice or ginger ale after that. If you can hold the juice down, we won't put you on an I.V. But I've been in communication with Leo McGarry and I know the next few hours, probably the next few days, will be more than just a little hectic for you and if you start this marathon dehydrated, you're going to find yourself right back here."

I nodded and squeezed my eyes shut as he prepared a shot. I've known people who react to needles worse than I do, but not many. I never figured out how to do that cool-stoic-guy thing when I know that someone's about to put a hole in   
my skin. Dr. Norris must have noticed because he swabbed my arm and told me to count back slowly from ten. At eight he stuck me and by three it was over. I lay back, letting the room spin around me again, this time knowing that most of the vertigo was from the shot. Not what was in it, just that I'd had one.

It made me think of Josh. Of all the I.V.s and shots and therapies and stitches that would itch and everything else that was in store for him. Then I found myself praying that he would be stuck and prodded and poked. Because then he'd be alive to complain about it.

Dr. Norris asked me again if I'd hurt myself in the commotion, but I honestly didn't feel anything. It would be more than twelve hours later, when I'd finally get so damn sick of the clothes I was wearing, when I'd sent Cathy over to my place to get me some clean ones, when I'd changed and seen the bruise on my knee. Funny how I don't remember it hurting until I'd actually seen it. Then I felt like my knee was swollen to six times its normal size and I'd limped for four days. But at that point, the dizziness and nausea was drowning out anything else my body might be telling me. And my head was actually doing a pretty good job of drowning out most of that, because I had Josh to worry about and would eventually have to go back to work and help deal with this whole disaster. Everyone was being exceedingly kind by letting me stay for as long as possible - probably on Leo's orders - but I knew that wouldn't last forever either.

I knew the minute the medicine hit my system. It wasn't more than two or three minutes, but suddenly the halos around lights that I hadn't noticed before seemed to clear up and I didn't have a white knuckled grip on the sheets to keep myself from falling off the wildly tilting bed. That was the moment fatigue lost. I was still worried and scared for Josh and the President, but I wasn't feeling that I was going to fall asleep or pass out or whatever it'd felt like before.

Maggie came back and asked me what I wanted. I got some ginger ale and drank it slowly, as per her directions. I hadn't realized how dry my mouth had been, the cool fizzing of the soda felt way too good. I finished it and they let me up with instructions to keep very strict track of when I ate and drank over the next few days to avoid any kind of hypoglycemic or dehydration problems. I was also supposed to come back if I threw up again.

Not long after I went back to the waiting room, a nurse came to get Mrs. Bartlet and announced that the President was out of surgery and that everything was looking good. I called over to the West Wing and told C.J. I made it very clear that I was calling to tell her and not the press and that until I was able to meet with someone from the medical staff and get her some notes that she should keep a lid on it. She said she'd gather up Toby and come back to the hospital and we could all talk to the medical staff. She kept repeating that it wasn't that she didn't trust me to brief her, but that she wanted to be here and ask her own questions. I had to keep repeating that I never thought that was what she meant and that I would have wanted to come back too, if everyone hadn't been nice enough to let me stick around the whole time.

C.J. came and got briefed by the First Lady and then the medical staff. She had to go straight back to get ready to do the next briefing - they were scheduled almost hourly while the surgeries and investigation were going on. Toby and I stayed, waiting on word from Josh's doctors.

About two hours after C.J. left, she called to say that there were some issues with a memo that didn't get signed. I knew I'd have to go back eventually and deal with some of this… this stuff. But I'd been gearing myself up to   
write a press release or briefing notes for C.J. or something. I hadn't anticipated needing to sit in with White House Council and Nancy McNally while we figured out, now in retrospect, what we would have done if Canada had suddenly decided they wanted Minnesota back.

The meeting only lasted about forty minutes, but it seemed to drag on for days. I knew we needed someone from the senior staff there, but the council and Nancy seemed to do ninety-five percent of the talking and I desperately wanted to get back to the hospital.

At the end of it all it was finally decided that if something had happened, gut reaction from everyone in the room said they would have turned to the Vice-President. Nancy also added that if the memo had been written, power would have been handed to him anyway. So they said they'd check a couple of other acts and laws and precedents and whatever and take that to the press.

My one truly brilliant moment of the meeting was telling them that in the technological age we now live in, we need to have a contingency plan. When the 25th was enacted, most people didn't survive gun shot wounds and the kind of split second decisions to move military troops over seas or launch a nuclear warhead weren't even conceived of. Which left us with this nebulous place where the President wasn't planning to be out of commission, but very well could survive an ordeal like this but couldn't sign the damn letter.

Council said they'd get someone right on that.

Day late and dollar short, folks.

When it was over I went down to the mess and got some more ginger ale and a couple packets of saltines. I didn't want to chance anything more exotic than that for a while, but I was starting to think the doctor was serious when he said I could end up being hospitalized myself if I didn't eat.

I took things back to my office to try and get a few minutes of peace and quiet. I needed to close my eyes for ten minutes and regroup before I could head back out to G.W.

I found about fifteen folders and papers dropped on my desk when I got back upstairs. I set the soda on the shelf behind my desk and began to sort out some of the reports that had been put on my desk. There was a summary of the   
Secret Service investigation so far, a report from the hospital spokesperson and a few things that some of the press had started assembling already. I had tried reading through things without my glasses, with my glasses, with the   
room lights on and the desk light off, with the desk light on and the room lights off. None of it was settling in. And then Leo was standing in my doorway looking uncomfortable as hell. I stood up to greet him and felt weak in the knees. I have no idea what kind of face I made or what kind of sound, but suddenly he was rushing up to my desk saying, "No, no, no, I haven't heard anything new. It's not Josh." His hand was on my arm squeezing tightly, as if he could get a grip for me.

"What's going on then?" I asked slowly.

"We need some help. C.J.'s been doing the press briefings all night and we're all a little wired now. I was wondering if you could help her out and tackle the morning news shows in a few hours? Let her get a little rest?"

I remembered thinking how much I didn't want her job earlier, but what was I going to say? No, I'm sorry Leo, that's her tough luck. She's the public face, make her suck it up? "Yeah, I can do that. I guess. Is there someone   
who can brief me on what Secret Service is releasing and how all this is going to be set up?"

"I'll have Jeff come down and talk to you as soon as he's free. We're going to give each of the three major networks, CNN and MSNBC ten minutes each, by remote, in the Mural Room. Do you want a break between each one or would you rather just run them all back to back and get it over with?"

I nodded. It's a good thing I didn't hedge, because Leo had already started organizing all this as if I'd agreed before he asked me. "There's going to have to be a break as each station sets up and breaks down, right?"

"Yeah," Leo agreed, "Maybe ten minutes."

"That's enough. I want to get back to the hospital." I knew Josh would be pissed, that my job should come first, that the people and their right to know because we live in a free society should come first, but at that point nothing came before him. I was terrified that one of two things would happen. Either they'd finish the surgery and he'd wake up alone, or… or he wouldn't wake up and I'd never get a chance to say good-bye.

"Yeah. I'll tell Jeff to stop by and give you some notes and stuff. Other than that, just tell them what you know." Leo squeezed my shoulder before heading for the door. "I'll ask C.J. or Toby to prep you after your briefing."

"Yeah." I flopped back into my chair. I didn't want to do this. I didn't want to explain that by some miracle I'd seen the impossible and that I was able to sit there and chat with them about it while my best friend had his lung reconstructed in what I was starting to feel was a vain hope of getting him breathing again.

&lt;{*}&gt;

I thought there was more time. I thought I'd have some time to psych myself up for this. To let C.J. or Toby prep me. But all of a sudden Jeff was in my office listing what I could say, what I couldn't and how to best redirect if asked. He handed me a paper with two columns on it, one marked 'Classified', and the other 'Public' as he left as if he knew that I wouldn't be able to retain much right now. Then Leo was there saying that MSNBC was first and that there was someone there to get me ready.

He walked me to the Mural room but hung back by the door as I went in. "Hey Sam, you'll be okay. "

There was an interviewer whose name I couldn't remember sitting in one of the two leather chairs in front of the camera set-up. I was ushered into the other one by a producer or news director or someone, where they began adjusting the lighting and experimenting with camera angles and distances. Just as someone yelled "Five minutes!" I was pulled aside by yet another person I didn't know and asked if I would be averse to a little make-up so I wouldn't look so washed out on-screen. I knew damn well that a coat of latex paint wouldn't make me look any less worried or haggard or exhausted, but I nodded and let her suffocate me with a make-up sponge and powder puff. She seemed to spend a very long time trying to cover up my the circles under my eyes, only giving up when someone yelled "One minute!"

I sat next to the news anchor, who introduced herself as Melissa, the cover reporter for D.C. while the regular was on vacation. "Is there anything you'd particularly like me not to ask about?"

She had an odd sentence structure and style and it took me a minute to understand. I realized that if we couldn't even start the interview understanding each other that it was going to be a very, very long ten minutes. "There are some things Secret Service won't let me talk about, but I can just say that if you go there," I answered and took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly. I'd practically become a regular on "Capitol Beat" and other political talk shows, so I was no stranger to the camera, but this was so, so different than arguing hypotheticals and numbers and party lines.

"Ten seconds!"

I took another breath. Held it.

"Tap the arm of the chair a few times if you need me to go to a break," Melissa told me and I nodded gratefully.

We both watched as he counted down with his fingers. Five. Four. Three.

Two.

He pointed at us.

"Good morning. As many of you heard in our recap of the evening's events, last night, President Josiah Bartlet, Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua Lyman, Secret Service Agent Ron Butterfield and Pennsylvania resident Stephanie Abbott were all injured in an assault in Roslyn, Virginia. We're at the White House this morning with Sam Seaborn, Deputy Communications Director for an update. First of all Sam, what's the latest on everyone's condition?

The fact that she didn't focus her attention solely on the President relaxed me a lot more than I thought it would. "The President's surgery went very well. It was an exploratory to confirm what doctors initially assessed - which is that his wounds were minor. For a gunshot wound," I amended quickly. Just because the President wasn't hurt as badly as Josh didn't mean he wasn't still shot. "He was hit in the side, but there was no organ damage or serious tissue damage. They expect he'll be back in the White House in just a few days."

"And everyone else?" Melissa prompted.

"Ron Butterfield will have surgery on his hand in," I looked at my watch, "Oh, he's probably either in now, or done. When they say the job of the Secret Service is to take a bullet for the President, they aren't exaggerating. He was hit in the hand while trying to get the President in his car. Stephanie Abbott, a young woman who just happened to be in the crowd was shot in the thigh. Unfortunately, I don't have a great deal of information on her condition, but I did hear that she'd had surgery to remove the bullet and is in good condition." It was actually remarkably easy to talk about this as long as I was talking about people I didn't know. Or at least didn't know well.

"And Josh Lyman? My understanding is that he's been a friend of yours for a long time."

"Yeah, Josh and I go back…" I had to think. "At least ten years now." I almost started with the whole car crash/ambulance thing, but decided against it. No one else would care. I took a deep breath. "Josh is still in surgery. He's on a heart/lung bypass machine while they reconstruct part of his lung. He went into surgery at about midnight and they say it's going to be a twelve or fourteen hour surgery."

"So he's still in surgery?"

I thought that's what I just said. "Yeah." I wanted to rub my eyes, but I wasn't sure how to do that without smudging my make-up. I fleetingly wondered how and why women did this to themselves every day.

"Is there anything you can tell us about who was responsible for this?"

I took note of her wording. 'repsonsible for this.' This. No one would call it an atrocity on t.v., at least not yet. No one seemed to be able to use the mundane word 'shooting', like it was a bar brawl on the South Side of Chicago, the sort of thing that happens at least once every weekend. So we just called it 'This.' "The Secret Service are the best armed guards the world has ever seen. They took down two shooters in Roslyn. They haven't been   
identified yet. We've had a few phone calls from people and groups claiming responsibility, but the Secret Service is fairly certain they've been bogus. So we don't have anyone in custody at this point, but that's not to say that we won't if investigations discover a larger conspiracy behind this." There was that 'this' again. And I wanted to shoot myself for being the first to say 'conspiracy' on the news. C.J. was going to have my ass for that one.

"Can you tell us what happened? What you saw, what heard?"

I wish like hell I could remember what I said then. I must have retold my story. I remember stopping myself from saying that I pushed C.J. down, but I fumbled it and barely covered. "I heard the first shot, looked up… I could see a muzzle flash or a glare off metal or something. When I realized there was going to be another shot, I headed for the ground. C-" I started saying C.J.'s name, but caught myself after the first sound and amended it to, "Someone was in front of me, so I pushed them down too." I knew using 'them' when referring to one person was ungrammatical, but English doesn't have a gender-neutral singular pronoun for referring to people, and I really, really needed one. I plowed on, trying to deflect away from that part. "There was a police car behind us. The window   
was shot out."

I must have gone on to explain how we found Josh, how we heard about the President once we were at the hospital. Someone had briefed Melissa fairly thoroughly and she asked me about rounding everyone up. I really wished that would   
get left alone. I wasn't any kind of hero or … or whatever. And with this coming out in the first of five rounds, I was fairly certain I could look forward to four more iterations of, "I didn't do anything anyone else couldn't do, wasn't doing. I just needed to know where my friends were."

Mercifully, it was over soon after that. Carol came down with a bottle of orange juice with instructions from C.J. to drink it and to not use the word 'conspiracy' any more. I was somewhat relieved that she'd sent Carol, that I didn't actually have to come back with a response. Then Carol added that I should eat something. I wasn't sure if that was from her or C.J.

After MSNBC was ABC. It went very much like the first one, but I avoided saying the c-word this time. It just happened to be that the spokesperson from the hospital was available, as well as the President's surgeon, during my   
segment, so I didn't even have to say as much the third time around with CBS, since I shared it with them. After that one Toby showed up in the doorway with a donut and more orange juice.

"Ginger needed to get out of the office for a few minutes, so I asked her to pick up some food for everyone," he explained as he stood and watched me take a few bites from the donut. I realized that I was finally hungry and that felt wrong. Wasn't I supposed to be too torn up about my best friend being in surgery to be able to eat? That's what happens to all the survivors in cop shows and novels and soap operas.

"Tell her I said 'thanks'."

"Sure. You're doing really well, Sam."

I nodded around another bite of donut. "Thanks. C.J.'s only had to send Carol down to yell at me once for saying something stupid."

"Someone was bound to say it. And if she gives you too much grief, just remind her about the word 'subpoena' and the drug thing last winter." He smiled at me and I was surprised to find myself smiling back. It wasn't often that   
Toby sided with me. I realized then how much we'd all need each other through this. I had the closest glimpse I ever hope to get of the solidarity, the brotherhood formed by soldiers in battle.

"Two more. Just two more and then you should lay down somewhere and rest for a few minutes," he told me quietly.

"I'm… I can't rest yet, Toby. Come on. Can you?" I wadded up my napkin in my hand and cast around for a trash can, not finding one.

"No," Toby answered succinctly. "I'll go call the hospital. I'll have an update for you by the time you're done, okay?"

"Thanks, Toby, I'd appreciate that," I said and then CNN was steering me over to the chair again.

&lt;{*}&gt;

I'd just gotten done with NBC when Toby came back into the Mural room, giving me a high sign even as they were unclipping the microphone. "They think they'll be taking him off by-pass in the next hour or two."

I sighed loudly, "Thank god. Then they have to hope they can restart his heart, right?"

"Right, Toby said, steering me out into the hall. "But the guy I talked to seemed pretty optimistic about that. You heading back?"

"In a minute. I want to scrub this crap off my face and gather up some of the memos and stuff that was dropped on my desk earlier." I stopped and hiked a thumb at the nearest men's room.

"Okay, I need to go … I have to deal with Secret Service and the thing with the canopy. Call me with news, okay?"

I nodded before ducking behind the door. I realized I should have asked if anyone in the Mural Room had that stuff they use to get the make-up off on the political shows. That oily stuff that makes you feel like you need to wash your face to get off the stuff they washed your face with. Water and liquid soap weren't cutting it, so I tried scrubbing it off with paper towels. By the time I was done I was red and my face felt as raw as my brain. One or two more hours, I kept telling myself. They'd take him off bypass in one or two more hours, shock him and he'd be back among the world of the living. No. I corrected myself. He's still among the living, even now. He's not dead. He was never dead. They were just giving his heart and lungs a rest. His brain never died, wasn't even totally deprived of oxygen. He's alive and he's going to stay that way. Dammit.

I dried my face and went back to my office. I started putting the papers I'd want with me in order and in my briefcase. I stopped to roll a kink out of my neck and when I looked up C.J. was in my doorway. Oh hell.

"Hey Spanky, come take a walk with me."

Oh come on, I didn't say 'conspiracy' again after you yelled at me. I was really, really careful after that. My inner voice was starting to sound like three-year-old. "Oh god, what'd I do?" Okay, so was my outer one.

&lt;{*}&gt;

Could I have made that conversation any more awkward for either of us? I should have felt better after it, but I didn't. I just felt nauseous. Finding out where my friends were after a shooting doesn't make me a hero. Pushing   
someone down to the ground so hard they loose the memory of what is probably, to date, the most memorable night of our lives does not make me a hero. There were no heroes last night. Maybe the Secret Service sharp shooters who took them   
down. "This." "Them." We didn't have names, we didn't know what to call 'this'. I leaned my head against the cool window of the Suburban, willing the driver to get us there now.

I think I thanked him as I ran for the doors. I'm not sure. It occurs to me that I can't remember a lot of what I said during this whole time. In some respects it was easier when I couldn't talk. Then there was nothing to remember. I know that anything I say, no matter who I think I'm talking to, could very easily make it's way back to the press. And while I doubt that The Post gives a damn if I thanked the Secret Service guy who drove me over here, not everything I say is so innocuous. I should really get a grip. It's been almost sixteen hours since hell broke loose. I figure that by this point I should have either gotten a grip or collapsed. And since I haven't I guess I'm stuck in some sort of weird adrenaline fueled limbo that's sapping away my brain-power.

I found myself back in the waiting room. Donna was there, biting her nails, Charlie and Zoey were talking in one corner and when I passed them Zoey pulled herself away to come give me a hug. "It looks good. My mom said they've started taking him off the bypass machine. She's in with my dad now, but as soon as she comes back I'm sure she can catch you up. I saw you on Good Morning America," she added almost as an afterthought.

"How bad did I look?"

"Well, you looked like you'd been up all night worrying about your best friend and your boss. You know… kind of pale… but you sounded good. Leo made a good choice to put you up there. You're so humble."

She actually pinched my cheek.

"Zoey, dammit, don't." I pushed her hand away and headed back for my chair to wait for an update by either the First Lady or the hospital.

As I fell into it and looked up, I saw Charlie standing over me. "With all due respect, Sam, Zoey didn't deserve that."

I blinked, looking up at him. One of the few things I'd absorbed from the briefing notes I'd been reading before the morning shows was that the guy they caught at that diner said that Charlie was the intended target. This guy who just found out that some of the biggest assholes in the world were quite literally gunning for him for dating Zoey, was standing here lecturing me, defending her.

"Charlie?"

"No, listen. Zoey's telling you that she's proud of you. That after all we went through tonight, you had the composure to face the nation and talk about it. I couldn't have done that. I'm guessing C.J. and Leo couldn't either or they would have. But they sent you, because you could. And while you don't think it was a big deal that you rounded us all up, I think it was a big deal. No one else asked about me, Sam. I'm not Senior Staff. I'm a dime a   
dozen kid who gets the President a can of Coke or tells him when his next meeting starts. I'm totally replaceable. I'm also totally responsible, but you still asked Toby where I was. It means a lot to Zoey that someone gave a damn, so please, when she's strung out enough, like she is now, don't blow her off."

I wasn't sure if I'd just been yelled at or thanked and I had no idea what to say to any of that. Well, almost any of it. "Charlie… you aren't responsible. The shooters are responsible. And you are not, in any way, replaceable. Don't ever think that."

He just nodded solemnly and went back to sit with Zoey.

I was grateful when the First Lady came back in and gave me something else to think about. As she explained what would happen now - that his lung and artery were repaired and now they had to shock his heart to start it again and then close him up - I was able to redirect my focus from Charlie's lecture back to Josh. It was amazing how simple the First Lady made the rest of the procedure sound. Just send several hundred volts of electricity through his heart to   
bring him back from the clinically dead, wire his breastbone back together and sew his chest up. No problem.

&lt;{*}&gt;

It was another hour and a quarter before I heard a quiet, "Sam?"

Leo was at the door talking with a doctor. I hadn't even realized he'd come back here. Last I'd known he was still at the White House. I stood and joined them. We were informed that restarting his heart hadn't been a problem and that his heartbeat was strong and steady, but that he was on a respirator to help him breathe. I'd choked when they said that and everyone turned at looked at me. The doctor explained that it was the next step after by-pass, that it was helping to re-expand the collapsed lung. He told me - us - that it was just temporary and it looked good for taking him off it soon.

"They're going to wake Josh up for a few seconds. I thought you might want to be there." Leo's voice was soft and gentle, like I was still in that weird shell-shock phase I'd been in when we'd first gotten here, what seemed like forty years ago instead of eighteen hours.

"Yes. Thank you." I smiled my first real smile since all this chaos had begun. Knowing that Josh was still breathing - albiet with help - literally made me breathe easier.

I had assumed Leo would be going with us, but he clapped me on the shoulder and squeezed past me into the waiting room to update the others.

I followed the doctor who was telling me a lot of numbers, and while I understood that B.P. meant blood pressure and PO2 meant pulse oxygen level, I didn't know what a good number was versus a bad number, so the numbers themselves meant very little to me. What I gathered from him was the same thing I'd seen when Josh had been in surgery - the doctor was calm, he seemed positive and upbeat about the outcome of the surgery. I knew that Josh had a long way to go, but for someone who'd just been shot in the chest, it sounded like he was doing as well as could be hoped. As we reached the   
recovery room door he put out a hand to stop me from going in.

"He's still on a lot of monitors and I.V.s. He has a tube that's draining fluid, air and blood from his chest cavity so that the lung has space to re-expand. There's a tube down his throat helping him breathe. He can't talk because of that, and even when it comes out his voice is going to be hoarse and his throat sore for a little while. We just want him to wake up for a second; start coming out of the anesthesia. It's often helpful and comforting for the patient   
to have a familiar face around when he wakes up. It wouldn't be surprising if he doesn't remember what happened and how he got here, but if he does… well, he was pretty confused and scared when he went under."

I nodded. The last time I'd seen him all his vital organs had been on display. I figured short of seeing him in the morgue, even all the machines would be a step up.

The doctor let me in and I moved slowly to his side. I decided that I was glad for the warning after all. Josh is a big guy. But with all the machinery beeping, buzzing and hissing around him he seemed… dwarfed.

There were two nurses in with him. One was adjusting one of the machines and the other was tucking one of those horribly short hospital issue blankets around his legs. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to touch him, but I figured someone would yell if I wasn't. His left hand had two needles in it. One from an I.V. bag with several bags of what I assumed were medication running into the main line, the other transfusing a pint of blood. I remembered that I'd planned to give blood and hadn't. Maybe when I wasn't about to fall over as it was. I took his right hand in both of mine, stroking the back of it softly with my thumb. His skin was cool and papery.

The doctor and the nurses seemed to be waiting for me to do something, but I wasn't sure what, so I just looked at him, tried to block out the machines and tubes and monitors, tried to will some of my own warmth into his cool fingers.

"See if he'll respond to your voice. Remember, he can't talk, but let's see if he can open his eyes," the doctor told me.

I took a deep breath and steeled myself like I was about to do something much, much harder than say Josh's name. I shifted his hand from both of mine to one and reached the free one up to stroke his hair back. He worries about his   
hairline, and maybe his forehead is a little bigger than it was when I met him, but with Toby and Leo around, no one really notices. He has wonderfully soft hair. I ran my fingers through it and squeezed his hand. Please, please do   
this. Please look at me, I thought to him desperately. "Josh. Josh, come on. Come on, buddy, open your eyes. I'm here, Josh. Open your eyes for me, okay?" I held his hand tight and kept stroking his hair.

There was nothing for a long moment and then I felt his fingers tighten just slightly on mine. "He squeezed my hand." I knew I had the stupidest grin. As I watched, he pulled his eyes about half open, obviously with supreme effort.

Suddenly his heart monitor started beeping wildly and he tried to pull away, but was too weak. The doctor stepped up. "Josh? Josh, you're on a ventilator, it's helping you breathe. You're all right. Relax and don't fight it and you won't feel like you can't breathe. You won't be on it long. In fact the next time you wake up, it'll probably be gone. Just don't fight it."

As the doctor spoke, Josh relaxed and the rapid beeping of the heart monitor slowed. His hand tightened on mine as the adrenaline faded and his eyes drifted shut again. "I'm still here," I whispered. "Just rest. You're going to   
be okay. You're going to be just fine. Close your eyes and rest…" I kept up the litany and the gentle touches until one of the nurses told me that he'd fallen asleep again and would be out for a while.

I nodded and they went back to their work. When no one was looking I placed a gentle kiss on the back of his hand and tucked it back under the blankets.

I went back to the waiting room and as soon as I opened the door, all eyes were on me. Time to be spokesboy again. "He woke up for a few seconds. He was a little scared by the ventilator at first, but he's going to be okay," I told them.


	4. Coping Universe I: To Strive (4/4)

I wasn't there when they took him off the ventilator. The President and Leo were, though, and that was good on multiple levels. Leo's been a friend of Josh's family for longer than I've known him. And having an ill President make the trip to your bedside has to be good for morale.

Leo called me after he'd woken up and gone right back to sleep. He told me to hand whatever I was working on to Toby and come back down.

There were still a lot of machines but without the respirator Josh looked so much better and much less… overwhelmed. Much less fragile.

They'd taken the President back to his own room before I got there, but Leo was waiting for me with a mile wide grin.

"How is he?" I almost didn't have to ask with a smile like that.

"He wants to know 'What's next?'"

I felt an answering smile take over my face and let myself truly believe for the first time that he'd really be okay. I fairly skipped past Leo to get in to see him. Leo grabbed me as I grabbed the door handle. "He's sleeping now. The doctors say he's going to do a lot of that for the next few days. But I'm sure he'll be happy to see you when he wakes up again."

I forced myself to calm down a little. Josh has accused me of bouncing when I'm in a good mood. I don't bounce. I may get a little spring in my step, but I don't bounce. I figured, either way, Josh wouldn't appreciate me jostling him on accident right now, so I took a few deep breaths and shoved my hands in my pockets.

As I moved to his bedside Leo said, "I'll tell Toby and Kathy that you're out for the day and that you probably won't be in until ten or so tomorrow."

"Ten? Leo, I can't - I have - "

"See him. Then when he goes back to sleep, you go home and sleep yourself."

I started to argue. The office was already short one President and one Deputy Chief of Staff. As soon as I opened my mouth Leo cut me off again.

"How much sleep have you gotten since Monday night?"

I shut my mouth and looked at my shoes.

"How much?"

"Three or four hours."

"In more than two days?!"

Great. Now Leo was mad at me. I so didn't need that.

"See him and go home. And I'm telling Kathy that if she sees you anywhere in the building tomorrow before noon, she's to call Secret Service and have your ass tossed out."

With that Leo was gone and I was alone with Josh. I sat in the chair next to his bed and stroked his hair. It was becoming a habit and I wasn't sure if it was to more of a comfort for him or me. His eyes opened a slit when I   
touched him and I realized Leo's admonishment of me had woken him up.

I leaned in close and spoke quietly, "Hey. Don't worry about all that. Leo's just being everyone's dad until the President feels up to doing it again."

He actually smiled for about a half second before scrunching up his face, worry taking over before amusement really could.

Oh hell, he didn't know.

"Everyone's fine, Josh. Now that you're going to be okay, everyone's fine." I took his hand in both of mine and stood up to perch on the edge of his bed so he could see me better. "The President was hit in the side, but he's already   
up and checking on you. And if I had to guess he's probably giving Leo the lecture he just gave me right about now. Everyone's okay.

"Sam?"

His voice was so strained, like he'd been shouting for days. I knew it was from the tube and would heal up, but I've always liked Josh's voice - the way he said 'ah-kay' for 'okay' and the gentle tones of his New England upbringing -   
and the raspieness made him sound awful. I forced myself to remember how close he'd come to never saying anything again and quit my mental bitching.

"I'm here," I said softly, smiling for him.

"You look awful." He tried to smile, but just then he was seized with the need to cough. After the first cough his face went wide with pain and he tried to swallow the remaining coughs.

He'd gone awfully pale and was panting in an effort to avoid the painful coughs again. I ran to the door and grabbed the first nurse I saw. She came in and grabbed the extra pillow I hadn't noticed on the bedside table. She handed it to Josh and showed him how to hold it against his chest to help splint the cough and mute the pain a little. He still fought against it, but his system just wouldn't be denied.

The first couple coughs were loud and raw and it sounded like he was bringing up razor blades or something. He gripped the pillow as tightly as he could in his weakened state and his eyes filled up from the pain. I watched as the   
nurse coaxed him into wrapping his arms around the pillow to give him some resistance and tried to talk him into coughing and getting it over with instead of fighting it.

"You have to do this to get better, Mr. Lyman. I know it hurts, but you'll feel a lot worse if you don't get this out."

I swear Josh called her a 'bitch' under his breath and I had to turn away to hide my face. I knew he'd think I was laughing at him, at his pain, but nothing could be farther from the truth. But hearing Josh sound like Josh made   
my world look a whole lot brighter.

When he finally seemed to be over it, the nurse fed him a few ice chips and then handed me the cup. "He shouldn't over do it with these, but they'll help his throat after something like that."

I nodded and sat down on the edge of the bed as she left. Josh's face was wet with tears and he had turned his head away from me, trying to hide them.

"Want some more ice?" I asked trying to coax him into looking back at me. My smile was completely gone now, Josh was still clearly hurting so badly.

A very short shake of his head was his only response. I set the plastic cup back on the table and hitched up closer to him very carefully. I took a tissue from the box on the bed-tray and wiped his eyes. "It's okay. It's okay to cry. I know it hurts. I'll talk to the nurse or the doctor before I go, but it sounded like she was saying that you're going to need to cough to get better - when my dad had his heart attack he had to cough after the surgery to… I   
don't know break up something in there, keep the air moving right or something. Anyway, if you need the pillow, just let me know. I'll hold it for you. I'll do whatever you need to get better, okay?" I was trailing my fingers up and   
down his arm and when I got to his hand, he turned his over and grabbed mine. "I'll stay," I promised him. "I'll stay until you're sleeping, okay? Then I'm going to go home and get a little rest myself. In the morning I'll come see how   
you're doing before I go in. Do you want me to grab anything from your place for you?"

Another short shake of his head.

"Okay. Let me know if you come up with anything. I've still got your spare key." I tugged the blankets up around his shoulders and made a mental note to tell the nurse that he'd probably need at least one more. His fingers were cold under mine.

Josh seemed drifting off a few minutes later. His hand had gone lax under mine, but when I started to get up to go, he tightened them again. "I'm here. It's okay. I'm still here," I whispered.

I waited another half hour before attempting to leave again. He didn't seem to be aware of me tucking his hand back under the blankets or kissing his temple as I left. I was almost out the door, with the nagging feeling that I was abandoning him, when I saw him clutch the blanket with the hand I'd been holding. He didn't move or wake, but it tore at me to walk away with him clearly so afraid and in so much pain.

I pulled a legal pad out of my briefcase and scribbled "I'll be back in the morning. Sam," on it, folded it in half and slid it under his hand where he'd see it and hopefully be able to open it when he woke up. I was still standing there, just watching him sleep, when the nurse came in and said that my time was up. I nodded and headed down to catch a cab home. It was only three in the afternoon, but like I'd told Leo, I'd had almost no sleep and what I had gotten was in moving cars and my desk chair.

I called Ginger from the cab and had her leave a message for all the Communication assistants that someone needed to call me at ten tomorrow and to keep calling me until I actually woke up, answered the phone and was awake enough to tell them to quit calling. After times like this, I had a tendency to sleep through my alarm. And there was no way in hell I was going to miss my chance to see Josh before I had to be at work again.

&lt;{*}&gt;

Josh woke up enough to say 'hi' the next morning when I came in and then promptly went back to sleep. I stayed for twenty minutes or so, watching the news on his t.v. with the sound off wondering what he'd say when he woke up enough to see it.

It was half-way through Wednesday when I got to work. Almost thirty-six hours exactly since the shooting. Most people had settled down a little and everyone seemed to have found enough time to get home, get a little rest and change clothes at least once since that night. Toby told me that the President would be returning to the residence later that day and resuming a work schedule by the end of the week. We spent the next hour in conference with C.J. and Leo on   
whether or not the President should make a public address once his doctor's cleared him.

We decided on a five minute taped piece that would be delivered to the news agencies to air Friday evening provided he felt up to it.

I was a little shocked when Toby asked me to sit down and do the first draft of it. I assumed we'd do it together or he'd want to handle it. I was even more shocked when he said that he felt that the President seemed to prefer having me write for him, felt more comfortable with my words and at this point we didn't want him to feel that he had to spend a lot time revising the comments.

It helped that it also gave me something to focus on. I'd left Josh another note when I'd left that morning telling him that I'd be back in the evening and I'd told Kathy that I wasn't taking any meetings that would keep me past six o'clock. A small part of me was resentful of the fact that it took something of this magnitude for me to actually get out of the office at something like a normal hour, but after a fairly short internal debate I decided that I'd rather work until midnight every night and have Josh and the President right along side me.

At six-thirty I signed out and made my way to my car. The going back and forth was starting to wear on me. I'd gone home, as Leo instructed, the night before, but I hadn't been able to sleep worth a damn. The capacity the human mind has for imagining trouble... What if they accidentally give him the wrong medication? What if a suture starts to leak and they have to operate again? What if they don't catch the leak in time? What if a blood clot goes to his brain? I remember at least three distinct nightmares of my phone ringing and someone telling me that I needed to come to the hospital… but that there was no need to rush, it was too late. When my phone had rung to wake me up, I'd broken out in a cold sweat and had an adrenaline rush that took me fifteen minutes in a hot shower to get over. I didn't even need coffee after that.

But he'd been resting peacefully that morning and now I was on my way back to see him.

Donna was there when I arrived. Kathy had said that she'd been let in to see him last night after I'd left and had been leaving when I'd been there that morning. But now something was different. I could hear her voice carry through the door and I could see Josh weakly batting her hands away from where she was pressing on his shoulders to keep him from trying to sit up.

I pushed the door open and at the first click of the handle Donna abandoned her fight with Josh and ran over to push me out of the room.

"No, Sam, not now."

I pushed back, "Donna!"

"No! Look, Sam, he's tired, this isn't a good time - "

"That's why you're yelling at him so loudly that I can hear you through the door?" I tried to push past her again.

Donna stood her ground, "Look, there's no way in hell I'm letting you in here if you're gonna be like this."

"Donna!"

"No, I said -"

"donna..."

We both froze and looked up at Josh. His voice was still raw and shallow, but he had both of our attention.

And shortly thereafter he began to pay for it. He groped around blindly with one hand and clutched at his chest with the other and began hacking. I physically shoved Donna aside to get to him. She made an effort to get to him first, but I was already in motion. I got to his bedside and grabbed his pillow, I pressed it to his chest and then sat him up to lean on my shoulder while he coughed. I rubbed his back with one hand and ran my fingers through his hair   
with the other and whispered, "Easy, easy, shh… it'll be okay," while he coughed.

He calmed after a minute and I lay him back. "It's okay now." I helped him get settled against the pillows and covered him with the blankets again and then gently removed his hand from where he'd gripped the thick bandages on his   
chest. "Donna," I said firmly, "Please go see if you can find his nurse and ask if he can have a booster for the pain." He had a PCM, but the display indicated that he had another 23 minutes before he could use it again. Tears were streaming down his face and his breaths were quick and shallow and I was hoping there would be something else they could do for him.

Looking like nothing more than a frightened rabbit, Donna nodded and backed towards the door.

Suddenly Josh grabbed my leg. "wait."

"Donna, hang on," I called out for him.

"Talk to the nurse… then… get some dinner or something."

She started back for the bed. "Josh - "

"Donna," I cut her off, "He's asking you to give us a little time. Okay? Please?"

Donna looked uncomfortable, but nodded when she saw Josh nod at my interpretation. "Yeah, okay," she finally conceded.

She looked so dejected as she grabbed her purse and headed for the door that I squeezed Josh's arm and told him I'd be right back before jumping up and going after her.

"Donna, stop," I called down the hall. She stopped but didn't turn to face me. I caught up to her. "Listen, Josh is really lucky to have someone who cares for him so much looking out for him now. But you don't have to do it alone. Let me help too. And let Josh decide what he needs."

The stubborn set of her jaw relaxed visibly and her shoulders sagged. "I know. I'm sorry. I just - I don't know how to do this. I want him to take it easy and rest and he - I just -"

I gripped her shoulders and smiled just a little, "I know."

Donna moved forward just enough to see if I'd step back. When I didn't she put her arms around me in bear hug. "I was so scared when we were waiting."

I hugged her back, "I know. We all were."

"I'm gonna go get Karen and then get a burger, do you want anything?"

I smiled at the peace offering. "Think you can get twelve hours of sleep in a take-away bag?"

"One large, strong coffee, got it." I hugged her one last time before going back to Josh.

I sat on the edge of his bed and held his hand again. "We're okay; she's just worried about you." Josh sighed and relaxed. We sat silently for a few minutes. I held his hand and stroked my thumb over his palm. Every once in a   
while his breath would hitch and his whole body would spasm in pain. I hoped Donna was quick about finding his nurse.

After one such bout he took a very long time to relax and when he finally opened his eyes there was so much pain and confusion that the only thing I could think to do was to lean over and kiss his forehead. "I know," I whispered. "I know you're hurting. It's going to hurt for a little while, but you're going to be just fine." His breathing continued to even out as I spoke, so I kept talking. "The First Lady's thinking of getting a skateboard to cut down the time for trips between your room and the President's." It wasn't my joke - I'd heard C.J. say it at her two o'clock briefing, but I thought it was funny. Josh smiled, but carefully didn't laugh. "Even the Surgeon General came by when you were in recovery. She seems pretty impressed with your surgical team. And she and the doctors and the nurses, they're all promising everyone within earshot that you'll be okay."

His eyes clouded over and I was afraid he was going to start coughing again. Instead he squeezed my hand and pulled in a thin but long breath, "but what happened?" he finally grated out.

My hands and feet went cold when I realized what he was asking. I was stammering, trying to figure out how to explain this to him when Karen came in.

"Hey Josh, Donna thought you might need a little something more for the pain." Her voice was light and soothing. I liked her.

Josh nodded fractionally at her.

"Maybe Sam can wait in the hall for a second?" She looked at me with raised eyebrows even as she spoke to Josh.

I could only figure Donna had menitioned my name, since I'd never seen her before. I knew her name because there was white board across from his bed that listed his doctor, his nurse and his respratory therapist. And I knew that before this was over they'd be adding physical therapist to that list.

I started to get up, but Josh grabbed my hand with a rather surprising amount of strength. I sat back down, "Okay, okay," I said as I glanced back up to the nurse to make sure it really was okay.

"We can do this your way," Karen agreed.

I scooted up closer to his head as Karen rearranged the blankets and helped Josh roll onto his side. I let him squeeze my hand as she gave him a shot in the rear.

"There," she said, rolling him back on his side and covering him up again.

Josh sighed, eyes closed, as the medicine moved through his system, clearly helping.

"Will this knock him out?" I asked as she disposed of the hypodermic.

"Shouldn't, but he's pretty tired, so just being comfortable may let him sleep."

I nodded and said thank you for Josh who had opened his eyes, but hadn't let go of my hand.

When Karen left, I shifted Josh around so that I could give him a hug, hold him for a minute. "Okay now? Or at least better?"

Josh was able to take a relatively deep breath now. "Yeah." He snuggled into me, so I shifted us so that I was leaning back on his pillows and he was on his side with his head and shoulders laying against my chest. I supposed it would be bit of a problem if Donna - or almost anyone else for that matter - were to have walked in on us like that, but I realized that I'd have rather explained things than move him. It occurred to me in that moment that the shooting   
could change our lives in more than just the obvious ways. I also realized, holding him in my arms for the first time in a long time, after an incident that could have turned the last time into the last time, that I was ready for whatever they could throw at us.

"You won't tell me either?" Josh's voice cut into my musings.

"Tell you what?" I asked as I traced the patterns of his hospital gown on his shoulder with one finger.

"What happened."

He seemed close to tears again and I realized that that must have been what he and Donna were fighting about when I came in. And why Donna didn't want me in the room. She knew I'd never lie to him.

I kissed the top of his head. "You're going to be fine," I whispered in preamble.

Josh grunted angrily, apparently thinking that was all I was going to say.

"Easy, Josh, easy. I'll tell you. But I don't want you to be afraid, because you really are going to be okay." I hugged him tightly to me, wondering how the words would affect them. How they'd affect me. I could barely speak of this to strangers or to friends who had been there, let alone to Josh who hurt so much sometimes he couldn't even breathe. "You were shot. In the chest. The bullet went into your lung which is why it's so hard to breathe sometimes." I kept him close and stroked his hair.

There was an initial sound of distress and stiffening of his spine as I spoke, but he gradually relaxed.

"Don't worry if you can't remember much right now. The doctors say that's normal. It's been less than two days and already you're awake and talking and that's great. And you're going to be fine." I needed to keep saying that. I wasn't sure if it was for him or for me, but I needed to say it.

Josh sighed shifted a little and made himself more comfortable against me. "Thank you." And with both a modicum of physical and emotional pain relieved, he fell into a deep sleep.

&lt;{*}&gt;

After the extreme harriedness of the first forty-eight hours after the shooting, the days started passing incredibly fast. I spent as much time at the hospital as I could - more than I really should have been able to, I realized in   
hindsight - and the rest of my hours working on stuff for the Midterms and finishing up whatever was on my desk when we'd left for the Newseum.

That night after I'd told Josh what had happened to him, I stayed at the hospital for about two more hours while he slept. Donna and I talked over the chicken salad sandwich she brought me with my coffee and then I gave her a   
ride home. I worked until about ten and then gratefully fell over into bed, confident that I'd sleep better than I had the last two nights.

I was woken up at four in the morning by Cathy. It turned out that her dad had had a stroke. She'd told me a long time ago about her mother's fragile health and she said she was leaving for San Francisco right away. I told her that we'd   
be here when she got back, but she said that with her only brother being back in Korea that she'd probably be staying. I told her that we'd be here anyway but if she wanted anyone to send her things from her desk I'd have Ginger or Bonnie   
take care of it.

On top of that there was Mandy. Now, I'm not the best judge of Mandy on a good day and these haven't exactly been good days, but she needed to leave. Fortunately she could see that and walked away with something like her dignity in tact. But the truth of the matter was that she was heading for a major break down. Between the FBI guy who was shot, the shooting at Roslyn and the fact that most of us had made it very clear that we'd never trust her again after that   
op-memo incident, it was really better for her to move on before she ended up in a rubber room. No, seriously, I mean that. She… was… she was a few fries short of a Happy Meal when I saw her in Toby's office turning in her resignation. I can't say that I'll really miss her. I know C.J. won't.

Speaking of C.J., she's been keeping the press away from us with a whip and a chair. The corker was when Carol told me she'd threatened that new girl from the L.A. Times with taking her newspaper, rolling it up, shoving it up her ass and lighting it on fire if she didn't quit trying to corner Charlie for a quote. I laughed for the first time at the next staff meeting. Leo told her to quit making empty threats. Either quit saying things like that or follow through. C.J. said she was going to take that as permission.

Most of us have talked to someone. There's really no way not to. People are going to want to know. Since I did the morning shows, C.J. said I was off the hook, but I went to Princeton with the guy writing for the Chicago Trib, so when he asked me if I wanted to grab lunch on the way to the hospital one day, I said what the hell.

Talking about it isn't so bad now that I know Josh'll be okay. It's going to take a while before he's back at work - something about how easily he'll get infections - but he's going to be okay. The doctor reminds me each time he   
comes in to check on Josh.

Five more days. They seem to think Josh will be able to go home in about five days. He's going to be house-bound for a while so Donna and I have already started divvying up the tasks that'll need to be taken care of for him. I'm   
going to do most of the driving for him - getting him home and to his doctor appointments and things; she's going all domestic on us - cooking, cleaning, that sort of thing. Josh made a joke that if I'm going to be around there won't be any cleaning left to do. It wasn't very funny in as much as it's probably true, but it was an attempt and we laughed anyway. Mostly because he was awake and failing (as usual) to be amusing.

&lt;{*}&gt;

It was a week after the shooting when things started to feel a little like normal. Josh was still in the hospital, but he was reading the papers and watching the news when he felt up to it. Every once in a while someone would visit and run a policy question past him to make him feel less out of the loop. Leo had spent a few hours with him that morning and came back the office saying that he was looking good and sounding better. I'd always looked forward to checking out and going to see him, but that day there was something about the way Leo seemed about five years younger after seeing him, after the President's check up that same day, that let me know that we were starting to come out the   
other side of this thing. So at eleven I told the girls that I was going for lunch, and went to the hospital. Josh was sitting up watching CNN when I came in. He smiled when he saw me.

"So… I hear you hit the ground running out there."

I raised an eyebrow and shut the door behind me. Josh was propped up in the bed a little and had this really goofy grin on his face.

"I what?"

"The President had a check up. He came by to see me before he left. Filled me in on a little of what happened out there. He says you really took the bull by the horns."

I know I blushed to my toes. "I didn't do anything anyone else couldn't have done."

He grew serious and motioned for me to come sit on the edge of his bed. I did so, carefully.

"The point is, no one else did it. You did. You saved C.J.'s life."

I just shrugged.

"According to the Leo, you not only saved C.J. but you were the first and only to start a methodical assessment of the situation." I started to interrupt but Josh waved me off. "Shut up. I still can't talk too much without coughing, so let me get this out. He said that you grabbed Secret Service, found out where everyone accounted for was and then proceeded to account for everyone else. C.J. said you were the one to tell her that the President was okay. Leo said you did the news shows because C.J. couldn't. Toby said that you basically volunteered for every damn thing that had to get done. You had control of the situation."

"Josh…" I stopped and took a deep breath. "I had control for a while. While I thought everyone was okay, I was okay. After I saw you… I didn't have control of much." I was a little scared to let him know how badly it had shaken me to see him fall over from behind that planter, but I wasn't worthy of the praise I was apparently earning. I couldn't tell him that I was willing to do just about anything that would get my mind off of what had happened to him because thinking about it too much was starting to make me feel a little bit crazy.

"You were in control enough to stay with me on the way to the hospital. Sam…" he had to stop to cough. I held the pillow for him and reached forward to rub his back as he grimaced in pain. He had to wait a few minutes and take some shallow, easy breaths before he could continue. "Sam, I was scared. I was so sure I was going to die. I've never known pain like that. I kept wondering how I got there. How I got to a place where I was being shot. And then you were there and I… felt better. I was still scared and it still hurt, but when you told me I'd be okay I believed you. It was worth fighting to get a breath in, because I knew if I could hold out that I'd get to a hospital and I'd be okay. Because you said so. If you were scared, you sure as hell didn't show it. The last thing I remember before being put under was you squeezing my hand and telling me that you came to get me. The next thing I remember was you holding my hand and telling me not to fight the ventilator."

Speaking so much exhausted him and he collapsed against the pillows, carefully keeping his breathing even and shallow to avoid coughing again. He reached for my hand and held it. I could see in his eyes that he believed everything   
he just said. I wasn't sure if I should disillusion him or not, but I saw things so differently.

"Josh…" I had to smile. "Do you know what you were thinking about when the ambulance got you here?"

He shook his head.

"The campaign. You kept mentioning the Senator - I think you meant Hoynes - and going to New Hampshire. I told you that we went to New Hampshire. What I said was 'you came and got me.'"

"Are you sure?" he whispered. "I could have sworn you said you came to get me. On the ground out there. You came to get me."

"You were a little mixed up." I shrugged at him, wishing I could meet his eyes.

"Not really. You did come to get me. Thank you."

I hung my head.

"Hey," he slugged me softly in the arm. "I mean it. You were there for me and you were strong for me when I was scared. Thank you."

"You're welcome. Just… I wasn't the hero you're making me out to be."

"I remember very little, Sam. If anyone's out to make you a hero it's the President and Leo."

"Leo must have left out the part about me losing my lunch in the bathroom as soon as they took you into surgery." I didn't want this. I didn't want him thanking me. I was so traumatized by everything that happened that I'd lost the ability to form simple words for hours.

"Actually he told me about that, but I don't think he felt he needed to share that with the President. You okay?"

"I'm fine," I had to laugh a little. The guy with tubes and wires hanging out of a half dozen places on his body was asking me if I'm okay. "It was just… shock. You know?"

"Yeah, I know. I also know that you're beating yourself up that it's me here and not you. So quit it, okay? You did good. You did damn good out there, Sam. Stop being so damn self-effacing. You saved C.J.'s life! You were prepared to take control of the scene, you did take control. Toby said you made sure that the senior staff, including Charlie were accounted for before you got in the ambulance with me. You kept it together when it was important. I dare you to find one person out there who didn't have a stress reaction at some point." He stopped to cough again.

I gave him the pillow and ran my fingers through his hair to calm him. "Shh… easy. It's alright." When it was over he leaned over and put his head on my shoulder to rest. I wrapped my arms around him loosely, still wondering if it hurt if I squeezed too tightly. "I needed to know you were okay. I knew I needed to hold it together long enough to make sure you were okay."

"And you did." he whispered.

So supposedly, it was that simple. I just held him for a while and let him rest. Maybe that was what it was all about - hitting the ground running. Doing what has to be done and worrying about how it affected you later. Maybe, if I looked at what I did instead of how I felt about what was going on, I could see that I did okay. I was suddenly tired. Drained of energy. Like all the tension I'd been carrying around for a week had faded. It felt good to feel tired.

Josh was tired too. He'd fallen asleep on my shoulder. I hoped no one would get pissed and kick me out for wearing him out. He was finally up for the better part of a normal day and now here he was back to sleeping in the middle of the day again. I gently shifted him until I could get one arm behind his shoulders and the other supporting his head and laid him back against the pillows. I knew I needed to get back to the office, but it seemed like so much bother all of a sudden. I moved down onto the chair and rested my head on my arms on the edge of his bed. Just for a minute. Just until I could muster up the strength to move. I didn't mean to fall asleep. Really.

"Let 'im sleep," Josh's voice rasped over the edge of my consciousness. Something warm and heavy was resting on the back of my head and it would take way too much energy for me to move it in order to sit up. I wasn't exactly comfortable, my back ached, but I was just so wiped.

"I'll wake him when I leave," Leo answered him.

"I'm up," I muttered, realizing they were talking about me. I started to sit up, but what turned out to be Josh's hand pushed me back down gently. I took a deep breath, resolving myself to the idea that I really shouldn't be sleeping   
at the edge of Josh's hospital bed. I reached up and held his hand in mine as I pulled myself into a sitting position. "I'm up," I mumbled again. "God, when did I fall asleep?" I checked my watch, adrenaline rushing through me as I   
realized I'd slept almost three hours in the middle of the day. "Oh my god."

"Relax. We knew where you were. When you didn't come back from lunch, I told Kathy to reschedule the afternoon appointments you really need to keep and to just cancel the rest of them. Then I came over to be sure everything was okay."

"It's fine, everything's fine," Josh assured us both.

"Good," Leo said, squeezing Josh's arm.

"Then I'll go back and harass the President into sending a delegate to speak at that damn biologists' luncheon instead of trying to go himself. He doesn't need to be doing anything he isn't absolutely required to do right now."

He turned to go, but Josh stopped him. "Leo. Is he okay?"

Leo smiled. "He's fine. He just likes to be Superman every once in a while. You take care. We need you back as soon as you're feeling better."

Leo left and I sat scrubbing my face with my hands. Josh was looking at me oddly when I looked back up at him. "What isn't he telling me?"

"It's fine, Josh, really. It's just a little… tense right now. Everyone wants the President to take it easy for a few more days. He's got his hands full with trying to keep Toby from sending a bill to Congress to repeal the   
Second Amendment and he doesn't seem to like the fact that I'm not doing much to help him." I shrugged. "And you know… the other stuff, all the bills and propositions and whatever that were on our desks when we left the office last Monday night are still there. We got a couple days reprieve from everyone right after all this, but now they want to jump back into it all."

"Maybe you can bring me something to work on the next time you come by," Josh suggested.

I almost told him flat out no, but I realized he was maybe starting to feel like it was his fault that we were all feeling a little overwhelmed. "We'll see what your doctor thinks of that idea, okay?"

"Okay."

We sat quietly for a few minutes, he'd fallen asleep with CNN on the t.v., but neither of us were really listening to it or watching it. We'd both turned more inward with our thoughts, still holding hands and just enjoying being together.

He probably thought I was going to fall asleep again, because after a while he squeezed my hand. "Hey, you should get back."

I shrugged. "I suppose." I wanted to kiss him. Just getting up and saying 'see you later' seemed like a horrible mood breaker. I squeezed his hand and he pulled our joined hands closer to his healing chest.

"I'm okay. Really."

"Yeah," my voice was barely a whisper.

"Hey, they're giving me solid food, finally, but what comes out of this place is more like solid waste. Could you, maybe, bring me a burger or something on your way out of the office tonight?"

"The doctors won't mind?" I was happy to help and more than happy for an excuse to come back that evening, as long as I didn't become a willing accomplice in a set back.

"Nah, C.J. brought me donuts this morning. They figure as long as I'm eating…"

"Sure. I'll grab something for both of us as soon as I can get out of the office." I smiled. I liked that he was asking me to come see him again.

"Thanks. Now get out of here before Leo yells at me for making his staff disappear."

I squeezed his hand again and then decided the hell with it. I leaned forward and kissed the top of his head. "I love you."

Josh just smiled softly at me. "Love you too. Now get out."

I smiled at him and followed directions.

I must have fairly skipped into the office because people were looking at me funny all the way through the bullpen. Donna saw me come in and ran to meet me.

"How is he? I mean, I saw him this morning, but… you were gone a long time."

"He's fine. Well, I mean, he's going to be there a few more days, but he's getting a lot better. In fact, he wants to talk to his doctor about getting some work done from his hospital room, so if you could find a few things that aren't likely to upset him too much, one of us can bring them to him as soon as he gets the okay."

Donna looked skeptical.

I ushered her into my office and shut the door. I didn't mind Donna knowing, but I didn't need the rumors that would start when some junior staffer only heard half of my explanation of where I'd been. "Seriously, Donna, he's fine. I… I fell asleep… that's why I was there for so long. He fell asleep after I'd been there a few minutes and I just… I rested my eyes for a few seconds. Next thing I know, Leo's there and Josh is yelling at him to let me sleep." I shrugged.

"So everything's alright?"

"Everything's fine. I'm bringing him some real food for dinner tonight. He says the stuff they give him isn't solid food, it's solid waste." I had to repeat the joke. Not only because I knew it would put Donna at ease, but also because it made me feel better. Josh was joking and complaining and that was normal. If he'd suddenly gotten all compliant, we would have really worried.

&lt;{*}&gt;

Thank god C.J. had the sense to warn me this was going to happen. She popped into my office at about five fifteen saying, "I moved my five o'clock briefing back to six, so you'll have time to get to the hospital before this hits the air."

Some early predictions about who was running for what in the midterm elections suddenly didn't matter one damn to me. "Excuse me?"

She sighed and collapsed into a chair. "Sam, Justice is releasing his name and his photo. There's also very, very nasty, not to mention crafty statement of support from a Florida white pride group coming out."

I felt myself go pale, my stomach turn to lead. "Oh, god." She didn't have to tell me any more than that. Any unspecified 'he' or 'him' meant only one person around here lately. None of us wanted to dignify him with a name any more than necessary.

"Yeah. Leo's telling the President now. He thought maybe someone should be with Josh."

"Okay, tell Toby I'm gone for the day." I grabbed my jacket and keys, leaving my briefcase. If this didn't go as badly as I expected it to, I could come back for a few things. But odds were good that I wouldn't be doing a whole lot of work before morning.

I took a second to marvel at the fact that there was still daylight when I was leaving the building, but almost wished for the cover of darkness. I didn't want anyone asking where I was going, could they come with, tell him I said   
'hi,' ask him how he's doing for me. I didn't want anyone to ask me why I had broken out in a cold sweat on a beautiful summer evening and why I was regretting having had time to grab an late lunch from the mess.

It was a quarter till when I got to his room. He was trying to read the Times, but was apparently having problems turning the pages with all the wires and tubes still hanging out of his right arm. My first thought was to go help him   
with it, but I realized that that would be pretty pointless since I needed him to put it away so we could talk. The t.v was on CSPAN and I knew C.J. would be taking the podium soon. "Hey,"

He glanced up from his paper, "Hey," he said weakly. "What? No food?"

I blinked, not sure what he meant for a second then remembering that when I could get away in the evening to visit, I usually brought dinner. "Sorry."

His grin faded, "What's wrong?"I took off my jacket and rolled my sleeves up. I loosened my tie before dropping the rail and sitting on the edge of his bed. I tried and tried - had been trying since C.J. told me about this - to decide how to say this to him. To find the magic words I was so famous for to make this sound… not half as bad as it really was. I reached up and ran my fingers through his hair, stroking his temple with the back of my fingers.

"Sam? Sam, come on… what's wrong?" Josh's voice was still raspy, which made it hard to tell when he was really doing the best he could and when he was starting to really fatigue.

"Josh, in a few minutes, C.J.'s going to do her evening briefing." That was true. It was also the easiest part of this conversation. It'd get worse from here on out.

"Yeah, should have been at five, right?" Josh was still using a form of verbal short-hand, conserving his voice and his breath by only using the words absolutely necessary to make his point.

"Right. She wanted me to have time to get here to watch it with you, because um…" Damn this was so fucking difficult.

"Sam, please, just say it."

I wondered if I was making him think of things worse than this. Personally, I couldn't come up with a whole lot of worse things, but Josh had always been better at the 'worst case scenario' than I was. And I'd gotten pretty damn   
good after his surgery. "Josh, they're going to release LeRoy's name and photo to the press tonight. Justice has apparently decided that they can give out that much. And C.J. says there's some sort of statement being made by a white pride group in the south supporting him."

Josh just leaned back into his pillows, nodding slightly. He glanced back up at the t.v. and then over to the door. I don't know what he thought might be out there. Maybe nothing, maybe he just didn't want to be looking at me or the t.v.

"If you aren't ready for this, we can turn the t.v. off and just talk for a while." I reached back up, brushing a thumb over his cheek.

"Can't avoid it forever," he finally said sadly.

We just sat silently, watching a call in segment about farm subsidies until they went to the briefing room in time to watch C.J. take the podium. Before she started speaking, I shifted around to slide my arm behind his shoulders and kiss his forehead. We held hands as we watched C.J. get ready to speak.

Several of us had noticed that she'd developed a … almost a tick when it came to talking to the room about the shooting. She took off her glasses, tucked her hair behind her ear, braced herself on her podium and stared straight   
through it for a moment before finding a spot on the back wall to talk to as she gave them the latest.

"There's news on the on-going investigation into the shooting of President Bartlet and Joshua Lyman in Roslyn, Virginia   
tonight," she started, "The Justice department has finally agreed to release the name and mug shots of the signal man." She ran through her little routine again, pinching her nose when she realized her glasses were already off, hair, podium, stare through her notes, stare at the wall. "His name is Carl LeRoy. He says he is a member of West Virginia White Pride, though that organization is disavowing any foreknowledge of the shooting or whether or not LeRoy is a member." She stopped and visibly took a deep breath. It was all the pause the press needed.

I glanced over at Josh. He was a little pale, but so far she hadn't said anything we hadn't known for a while.

Finally C.J. called on someone for a question. I got the impression it was more to quiet them, than because she actually wanted to talk to them. "Sandy?"

"Will Justice be seeking a subpoena of West Virginia White Pride's membership rosters?"

C.J. closed her eyes for a second. "I'm not sure what exactly Justice is planning to do next, you'd have to talk to them, but my personal thoughts are that there may be some problems with that due to freedom of association."

Another chorus of "C.J! C.J! C.J!"

"Ken."

"You said we'd be getting photos?"

"In your press packet," she cut him off.

Josh made sound I couldn't identify, and I muted C.J. "Hey?"

"Pictures?" he asked quietly.

"We can turn this off," I reminded him.

He just shook his head. "Be in the papers tomorrow. Be on the news tomorrow… day after…" He tightened his hand on mine. He just wanted to get this over with.

We left the t.v. muted until the briefing was over and then flipped on CNN. They had the story processed in less than half an hour.

"And tonight, the White House released the name of the signal man in Roslyn, West Virginia who is the only surviving member of the three person team responsible for shooting President Bartlet last Monday." A picture of a white kid, about seventeen or eighteen flashed on the screen, and I don't think either of us heard anything else she said.

I tore my eyes away after a while and glanced over at Josh. His eyes were closed and I could see him tapping his fingers as he counted to five as he took a deep breath in and five again as he let it out. He did it two more times before opening his eyes. "I can't decide if I'm grateful or angry."

"It does seem a little bit of an injustice. You're still here, the President went home on Wednesday but he's still the headline." I leaned over and kissed his temple.

"I don't want to be a headline," he whispered, cuddling into my shoulder.

"No," I said quickly, "I know that. That's not what I meant. I'm sorry. It's just that…" I reached over and gently touched his face. "This all just sucks so bad."

Josh nodded. "He looks… stereotypical."

I glanced back at the t.v. The kid's face was still there, and I couldn't help but wonder what the hell they could still be saying about him since all they'd released was his name and photo. That was about fifteen seconds worth of information. But Josh was right. The kid was everything we think of when we hear 'neo-nazi'. Bald, scowling, tattooed, young. I hated him and everything he stood for and it was getting increasingly difficult to stay calm and detached while sitting in Josh's hospital room. The room where can't even turn the page of the newspaper without help because of all the wires and tubes connected to him, and this kid is getting national recognition. And support. Let's not even talk about the assholes in Florida supporting him. I hadn't heard that statement yet, and if there was anyway for me to avoid it, I planned on it. I wanted Josh to, too. I didn't think he needed that kind of stress so soon.

"What happens now?" He asked softly, picking up my hand and rubbing it, trying to calm me.

This was so wrong. Wrong beyond belief. I needed to regroup. Josh wasn't supposed to be comforting me. This was entirely wrong. "Well, in the immediate future, I'm going to step into the bathroom." I needed to get a grip. I needed to hit something, but that wasn't really an option at the moment.

I stood up and he let me slide my hand out of his, but he looked skeptical. "What?"

"It's okay to be pissed. I'd be more upset if you weren't upset, you know?" He was starting to drift off. He was usually asleep by eight o'clock, the end of visiting hours and it would be that soon. He leaned heavily back on the pillows, eyes closed, fidgeting with the blankets.

"I know," I whispered, "I'll come back in a second and help you get settled for the night." I still wanted a second to compose myself and splash some water on my face.

When I came out, Josh was flipping through the channels, watching the kids face pop up and disappear, listening to see how each news outlet covered the same event. I walked over and took the remote and turned off the t.v. "He's Justice's problem now." I kissed his forehead as I wrapped the cord to the remote/call button around the railing so it'd be there when he needed it. I sat him up and helped him stay upright with one hand while I pressed the button to bring the bed back a little. He wasn't supposed to sleep flat yet and I was sure that was annoying him all to hell, but we'd had a brief argument the third day he'd been awake about what he wanted over what the doctors ordered and I told him that I loved him enough to side with the doctors on this one. So I brought the bed back to about a thirty degree angle and arranged his pillows and leaned him back. I helped him get his bathrobe off amid a flurry of one and two word rants about hospital gowns and straightened out his blankets.

He sighed and snuggled into the pillows, "One more week."

"One more week for what?" I asked as I brought the blankets up around his shoulders and made sure the I.V., the pulse ox monitor and whatever other apparati were still trailing from him weren't going to get tangled.

"They think I can go home in a week."

He'd started some basic P.T. and they'd been showing him how to change his bandages and the stitches were due to come out in another two or three days. I sat down on the chair near his bed. "That's fantastic. Once they know exactly   
which day it is I'll tell Leo that I'm taking a couple days, okay?"

"Sam, if they're sending me home -"

I shook my head at him. "Let me bring you home. Let me stay for a day or two until we're sure you won't run into something you need help with." I wanted him out of the hospital. I desperately wanted to see him get that much   
better, but the idea of him being on his own scared the crap out of me. "Please?"

Josh nodded. "'Kay. Thanks." He reached a hand out towards me. "Sam?"

"Hm?"

"Can you stay until I'm asleep tonight?"

"Yeah. I'll be right here. I'll always be right here."


End file.
